Cielos Fracturados Y Espirales Infinitos [FICTOID]

“This?  This is what you wanted to show me?”

“Yes.”

“A gawdamn Mexican paperback?”

“Bolivian,” said the profoundly sweaty scientist.  A half-eaten Butterfimger bar melted in his lab coat chest pocket, making his name tag stand out in stark relief:  Hordinger.

His boss -- profoundly less sweaty -- turned the dog-eared paperback over in his hands.  It depicted all the things one would hope to find in a mid-line sci-fi novel:  A babe, a boob, a BEM.*

The boss ever so casually laid his left hand in his lap, inches away from the panic button under his desk.

It never hurt to be prepared when dealing with these scientific types, especially the ones up to their eyeballs in quantum metaphysics.

“And what exactly are you hoping to show me in this?”

“It’s on page fifty-seven, halfway down,” said Hordinger.  He jabbed a chocolate stained finger into the book at the appropriate spot.  “’ Haga una soga al final de un trozo de cordel y llévelo al centro del paquete; Vuelva a rodear el paquete en ángulo recto con el hilo, rodee el lazo y, formando un nudo, deslícelo por debajo, como se muestra en la imagen. Un tirón en el extremo libera el nudo instantáneamente, como se puede demostrar mediante experimentos.’”

His boss looked at him blankly.  “Meaning…”

“It’s a way of getting a knot to stop light.”

The boss’ hand inched closer to the panic button.  “Any knot can stop light,” he said.  “String and rope are opaque.”

“No, no, no!  Not like that, like this!”  Hordinger groped around in his lab coat’s ample outer pockets, finally pulling out a length of fiber optic cable tied at both ends in an odd looking knot.

“There’s a beam of light trapped in there,” he said.

“A beam of light.”

“Yes.”

“Trapped?”

“Yes!”  Hordinger yanked on the end of one knot and suddenly a brilliant white flashlit up his boss’ office.

Gazed and blinking, his boss asked, ”What was that?”

“An ordinary strand of fiber optic able,” said Hording.  “I tied one end in the knot described in the book, shined a light in it, then tied to other end the same way.  The beam of light is trapped inside the fiber optic strand.”

The boss looked at the book.  “You found that in this book?”

“Si -- I mean, yes.  Cielos Fracturados Y Espirales Infinitos by Trucha de Kilgore, written in 1957.”

“Soooo under current copyright law, this is in the public domain?”

“Si -- I mean, yes,” Hordinger said, wiping his sweaty face with his hand, leaving chocolate streaks on his jowls.  He looked for a place to dry off his damp palm, found none, so wiped it on his lab coat.”

“Know what this means?” the boss asked.

“Si -- I mean, yes,” Hordinger repeated.  He did that often when nervous, which was just about all the time.  “We can store an infinite amount of data for an infinite amount of time on such a knotted fiber optic strand.”

“Wrong!” said his boss.  “Think of military applications!  We can store high energy laser beams in there, firing them by untying the knot.  You no longer need a power source, you just charge up the strand at a land based nuclear reactor then hand out the charged strands to soldiers and sailors who might need them.  Hordinger, I’m a genius!”

Hordinger blinked, tiny droplets of sweat -- not to be confused with tears – running down his ample cheeks.  “You?  I found the passage in the Bolivian paperback.”

“But I came up with the practical application,” his boss said, “so of course I get the credit.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“It isn’t,” said the boss with refreshing candor, “but don’t forget who around here signs the checks -- and the patent applications -- around here.”

© Buzz Dixon

* Or in the Spanish:  Un bebé, un bufón, un monstruo de ojos saltones