Cheers - I needed that Harry. Now where was I?" You were explaining how your experiment worked - or something." Oh yes, I was telling you about the test, wasn't I?" That was it Jim, something like that."
"Yes. It had taken me ages to get things ready for the test, and the usual things seemed to get in the way. You know what it is like - three kids and a wife to keep - and the money starting to run out. Mind you, Deidre wasn't able to see the point of my experiments, but she is constructive in her outlook - in her own way of course. She has developed a way of getting what she wants which I haven't managed to deal with yet. She usually asks me favours when she is breast-feeding Helen - looking as motherly as possible. This time she wanted me to fix her up with a chair on our monorail system. I put it in originally to carry things around the house, but it has now become a way of dealing with Helen. Deidre parks Helen in a harness suspended from the monorail so that she can move her around without having to carry her. When Deidre isn't using it for Helen, the other kids use it to play on, driving all round the house.
As I was saying, Deidre is constructive in her outlook in her own way. Because of her training she likes to inspect all my work before I connect up the power. She has been that way since I met her when she was at the semiconductor plant. You could say that making good connections is one of her specialities.
I was about to connect up the basic elements of my latest idea when Deidre came into the workshop, leaving baby Helen suspended behind her for a moment. She had chosen her moment with her usual precision.
"Jimmy love, can you do me a favour?" she asked in her super-sweet voice. Her blouse was open as she had just been feeding Helen. What can you say when a woman like her rubs her breasts against your face?
"Jimmy, be a dear and fix me up with a seat to ride on the monorail while I'm taking Helen around with me." she went on.
I thought of the extra power drain that another linear motor would cause and tried mentally to work out the stresses in the rail supports with an extra sixty or seventy kilos attached. I gave up. I said that I didn't know if the track would stand up to the strain - which was true. With the extra weight of a larger linear motor, a chair, and Deidre, it could easily fall down unexpectedly; so I told her what I thought about it.
Deidre usually listens to my answers on technical subjects and accepts them for what they are. Sometimes she makes a suggestion which will lead to her getting her own way eventually. It was one of those times. I tried to continue with my work but I couldn't get out of it. Some of her milk dribbled down my cheek as she squeezed me close.
"Why don't you use one of your anti-gravity things?" she asked, knowing that they had not been complete failures. It was just that they lost weight without ever becoming weightless. She was pointing to my latest effort which was housed in one of her cake tins. (I had to buy it from her you know.)
It had been my first real glimpse of success. I had had to try it out in the kitchen because the cooker power point could give me the 12 kilowatts I needed to run it. I put it on the draining board and switched it on. Nothing seemed to happen except that it didn't get warm. Just imagine, the power of twelve electric heater bars going into an eight inch cake tin and it stayed cool all the time! I knew that the energy had to be going somewhere but I couldn't find out where. While it was powered up it weighed only about a hundred grams or so but without power, it weighed over two kilos.
I found out where the power had gone when I turned it off. The two hours worth of lost kilograms returned with a vengeance! It dropped through the draining board and a rubbish pail beneath it, then sank into the concrete floor as if it were wet mud. The power wires broke off as the cooker's master switch blew up.
Can you work out what happened? The power was definitely off! There I was with Deidre being nice to me - and succeeding. I told her that I thought it would be too dangerous to use. Then she made the sort of suggestion that was too obvious for me to see before. "Why don't you turn it upside-down just before you turn it off? Wouldn't it fall upwards?"
The thought of the first cake tin on the moon crossed my mind. I did say that Deidre was constructive didn't I?
It was in the middle of the afternoon, and John and Andrea had just come in from playing, so we had an audience. I took the unit into the kitchen again to use the same power supply. I had replaced the switch with one of mine as a temporary measure to keep the cooker going (we have to eat).
While I was making the connections I had a flash of inspiration - I rigged up a crude spark gap to protect the switch against the kick-back which had happened in the previous test. I had replaced the draining board so I had a surface to work on. Deidre shooed John and Andrea away, so that they stood in the kitchen doorway in relative safety.
"Are you going to blow us up Daddy?" Andrea asked in an ordinary sort of a way. John answered her with authority in his voice:
"Of course not Andrea, he only fuses the lights." I had to laugh; John is eight and Andrea is six.
I said to Deidre that I planned to turn it on for about a minute, turn it over and then switch it off. I was feeling a bit excited and tense so I lit up a cigarette and offered one to Deidre. (I had forgotten that she had given up smoking.) Without thinking, I absentmindedly put the lighter down on top of the anti-gravity unit. Helen started howling for more suck when I switched on the power so I was distracted for a moment.
Nothing untoward seemed to happen. I didn't expect it to - as it was only a re-run of the first test which had lasted for two hours before giving trouble. Then I noticed that I had left my lighter on top of the unit so I picked it up and put it in my pocket.
The original test had not gone wrong until I had turned the power off after two hours, so I didn't think that a couple of minutes would do any harm. I asked Deidre to turn the power off as soon as I had turned the unit over. Life is full of surprises: I was completely unprepared for what happened next.
I turned the unit over and Deidre turned the power off as soon as I has put it back on the draining board. There was a flash and a fizz from the spark-gap - but I was expecting that. I wasn't prepared for the wind. A fraction of a second after the power had been cut off there was a gust of wind which nearly knocked me over. John and Andrea fell flat on the floor and screamed. The unit was sucking air out of the kitchen like a giant vacuum cleaner. The net curtains flapped like flags in a gale, and my cigarette was pulled from my lips and flattened itself on the upturned bottom of the unit. The windows were open because it was a warm day - which was fortunate.
For a moment I stared at the tin. It looked wet in a treacly sort of way, and rippling out of focus like the bottom of a swimming pool. I was fascinated by the appearance of the maker's stamp on the bottom of the tin. The air was being liquefied steadily - but for how long? I thought of what might happen if it were suddenly released inside the kitchen so I pulled out the wires. I tried to discover if there was much pull sideways and there didn't seem to be any. Keeping my hands as low as possible, I picked up the unit and held it at arm's length. It now weighed about nine or ten kilos, it was very cold, and was steadily getting heavier. My plan was to throw it out of the window into the back garden. As I approached the window, the machine itself assisted me in my aim. It grabbed the bottoms of the net curtains and pulled itself out of my hands. Then it swung towards the open window as it appeared to climb up the curtains. Suddenly, the curtain fixings gave way under the strain of the extra weight. I didn't see what happened next because I fell over backwards as the weight of the machine was taken off my hands.
When it landed in the garden there was a loud fizzing followed by a sort of 'whumpf' noise. It was like a very large and distant explosion. The windows rattled and a door slammed shut, then all was quiet. As I turned over to start to get up, I noticed that there was something hard pressing against my thigh. I reached for the spot and realised that it was my lighter. It was hurting as if I were lying on it but it was pushing up against my leg. I put my hand into my pocket and forced my fingers around it. I dragged it out until I was in a position to use my other hand. I tried to turn it over, but as I did so, a peculiar force rolled me sideways. It must have looked as if I were having a fight with a mouse and losing.
John asked in a worried tone: "Are you alright Dad?"
Andrea started bawling, and Helen decided that more decibels meant more food. Deidre thought I had had an electric shock and tried to help me. When my clasped hands hit the floor the effect disappeared. Apart from slightly bruised knuckles I was unharmed. I got up, still holding the lighter, and looked out of the window. I could see a few marks where the unit had landed, a rather bent cake tin and a lawn which was white with frost - which something of a record for late August. My attention was drawn back to the lighter which was trying to force its way out of my hand. Experimentally I shook it and the effect stopped. Holding it firmly between my two hands I held it still to see what happened. Within seconds the effect began to return, and started to lift my hands upwards. Its direction could be controlled by turning the lighter very slowly. I shook the lighter furiously to stop the force again because I didn't want it to go through the ceiling. I looked around for some means of holding it. Deidre thought it must have been hot because she offered me an oven glove. It was almost ideal, its thick padding offering protection from the sharpish corners of the lighter. She put it on my left hand while I continued shaking the lighter with the right.
I surprised her by saying that I planned to try flying with antigravity and to get the camera. She nearly lost her composure at that point - she offered a breast to Andrea and nearly slapped Helen as she tried to shut them up.
I asked John to open the door for me. My arms were beginning to ache with the effort of shaking the lighter as I went outside. It was then that I tried to work out if Andrea had stopped crying when she heard that I was going flying or when Deidre had pushed a breast into her face. It was fortunate that something had quietened her because Andrea can cry most effectively when she gets going. Helen's bawling is something which is more easily tolerated.
Deidre came out of the house with the camera, oblivious of the fact that her blouse was still open. I did say it was warm for late August - didn't I?
When I reached the middle of the lawn I stopped shaking the lighter and held onto it as if it were a crane hook which was about to lift me. Shortly afterwards the lighter lifted my hands above my head and pulled upwards. I suddenly had this feeling of the ground falling away from me and I thought grimly about what would happen if the lift gave out when I was a few hundred feet up. Then I forced myself to turn the lighter so that its pull would make me fly horizontally. It worked too well. The wind in my face was blowing so hard that I had to screw my eyes up so that I could hardly see at all, and my shoes fell off. I turned back towards where I thought my house was. I felt like Clark Kent flying without his fancy costume. (Now I know why he wears boots.) I gently shook the lighter to try to control my flight. I dropped like a stone and scared the wits out of a man who was peacefully clipping his hedge. It scared the wits out me as well until the lift came back.
I got my bearings by imagining a mental map of the district and working out which roads were which. I aimed for the large beech tree in our garden because I calculated that if I was to fall, the branches would slow me down a bit. By this time several neighbours had gathered in the garden with Deidre and the children. I manoeuvred myself above the beech tree and went upwards to what I thought would be a safe height to start shaking the lighter again. I tried to estimate of how much shaking produced the desired result. It was a waste of time. My hands were getting tired and I was no wiser after two attempts. On the third attempt I succeeded without realising it. My feet brushed the topmost leaves of the tree as I stopped falling and began to rise again. Then I noticed that I was rising more slowly than before, and that my hold on the lighter had caused it to release some of its gas. I therefore released more gas until the lift was only just greater than my weight so that I was able to fly down towards Deidre and an increasingly large group of curious neighbours.
Now I felt I had control of the situation I decided to give them a bit of a show. I flew around with the aim of brushing the tops of our apple trees. Either I aimed too low or the power had dropped off a little more, because instead of flying over the trees, I flew through the topmost twigs. My un-gloved hand was scratched and I was effectively pelted with immature apples around my head and shoulders.
After that inglorious effort I tried to land Superman style. As my legs had had no weight on them for some time, I was unprepared for the force of the landing and I fell forward, diving into a privet hedge. The lighter dropped to the ground and Deidre picked it up. Its power was spent.
You can believe it or not, but that is how I came to have all these scratches and bruises on my face and one hand, and explains why my lighter doesn't work.
By the way, the antigravity unit has served its purpose - Deidre got her way in the end - she now rides around the house on a camping gas bottle. Oh! - while you are there George, get us another drink would you?
Copyright (C) W. H. James. 07/06/1984 Revised 30/11/98 (2745 words)
.
Wilf James,106 Jarden, Letchworth, Herts. SG6 2NZ, UK.
E-mail wilf.james@net.ntl.com..
Go to Next: . . . Gaslite
Go to Previous: An Entry In A Log