Burning Woman and the Ghost Lance

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. January 29, 1993 CY

Of course the council agreed with my demands, and a laboratory was arranged in a secure basement of a large military research center. They did not allow me to work alone, however. Two armed guards stand by the only door to the chamber, and I have an assistant.

Da’anammi Dosahaih is a tall, broad-shouldered woman with haunting brown eyes and unshakably serious demeanor. As a lab assistant, I found her to be more than competent, if laconic.

“Da’anammi?” I asked this morning, while soldering together a circuit for the weapon’s control system.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Remind me again, what is Ohm’s Law?”

“It is when the current passing through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points, and inversely proportional to the resistance between them.”

“Thank you, Da’anammi,” I said. I was familiar with Ohm’s work, of course, and could recite most from memory. I just liked hearing Da’anammi’s voice. Engaging her in small talk was impossible during working hours, and getting her to say more than a few words at a time was a bit like pulling a stubborn tooth.

After a time, I took notice of my soldering iron, which had cooled. Reaching for the Bunsen burner to re-heat it, I saw that it had gone out. The basement was drafty, and the burners tended to blow out easily, so this was a common occurrence.

“I’ll get it, Doctor,” Da’anammi said, quickly turning off the gas to the burner, and then reached for the matches.

“Thank you, Da’anammi,” I said. “But don’t bother. I was finished here anyway.”

Da’anammi flashed a brief, rare, smile as she turned back to her work.

“Very well, Doctor.”

Her face quickly regained that serene look of concentration, but now I wanted to see her smile again. Her teeth had seemed too white to be believed.

“Da’anammi,”

“Yes, Doctor?” Da’anammi said without looking up.

“You speak Nahuatl very well,” I said. “I appreciate that, you know. It is refreshing to speak in my native language, since I am not yet that comfortable with Tsalagi or Onondaga.”

The smile flashed again. Like a bright flare or skyrocket, and just as quickly gone. I had the inexplicable insight that these were clearly a civilized people, to have such advanced dental hygiene.

“But, I was just wondering...” I continued, “You have such a charming accent. Not like any in my experience. Where did you pick it up?”

“I am Shoshone,” she said. “The language of my people has the same roots as Nahuatl, so it was not hard for me to learn it.”

“I see,” she said. “Where did you go to school?”

“I studied at Wind River University, near my home town,” she said. “Later, I went to Oxford University in England for my PhD, with a specialty in Physics.”

“Interesting,” I said, finding myself at a loss for anything further to say. I had been mostly self-taught, and found people with scholarly degrees intimidating.

“Wait,” I said finally, as a new light suddenly switched on in my head. “You have a doctorate? From Oxford?”

“Yes.” She blushed modestly and smiled again. “I had a Dresden Scholarship.”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Doctor’? You’re a doctor, too.”

She blushed even more, which didn’t seem possible, but there it was.

“I am your assistant. I only mean it as a sign of respect.”

“Nonsense,” I said, with a sudden flash of impatience that I immediately regretted. I took a deep breath, then continued more calmly. “We are equals here. Peers. And I will have none of this protocol and posturing crap. Call me Matla, please.”

“Alright,” she said, hesitating. “Matla.”

“Thank you, Da’anammi.” There was a prolonged silence as each of us focused our embarrassment at this exchange into our work. I am sure my cheeks were as red as hers.

After an hour I was ready to scream, so I looked around the room to dispel my awkwardness, noticing the wall clock.

“Ah, it is time for lunch. Could you please bring me something from the kitchen? Maybe a bit of that roast venison you made last night?”

“Of course, Matla,” Da’anammi said, seemingly unconcerned that I was still treating her like an assistant after my outburst. She favored me with another flash of a smile as she got up to leave.

“Thank you, Da’anammi.”

Her smile broadened even as she left the room, which suddenly seemed dimmer with her absence.

I was reminded of Amina, and not just because of her smile. That same serenity of mind. But, at the same time different. Da’anammi was her own person. Unique. And, to be fair, somewhat of a mystery. A puzzle that demanded solving. A pleasurable challenge, certainly.

I was then struck with painful guilt at that suggestion. It was too soon, I thought. My heart still ached from Amina’s death. How could I be falling in love again so quickly? But, could I afford to wait so long? Could I let the opportunity for happiness pass me by again, because I moved too slowly, too cautiously? For that matter, how could I be sure Da’anammi would even be interested? She had given no indication of any interest in that direction, so far as I could see, and making an unwanted approach would be disastrous.

I remained lost in such thoughts until Da’anammi returned with lunch for us both.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. February 15, 1993 CY.

After reading Da’anammi’s doctoral thesis on fluorescent lighting, and other papers on the use of neon and other noble gases in light generation, I have decided to begin conducting experiments using various gas mixtures, including tubes and bulbs of various shapes and sizes.

Her paper was brilliant, by the way. I have to admit that I am becoming increasingly impressed with Da’anammi’s intellect, as well as her personality. Such a good person with such an astonishing intelligence, hidden behind veils of shyness and self-doubt. There is a kind of tragic pathos in that, at least to me, who has never suffered from such impediments to my ego.

And, I must confess that I am falling in love with her, in spite of myself.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. May 4, 1993 CY.

Da’anammi made a suggestion today for using mirrors to amplify the light generated by our noble-gas lamps. I drew up some specs for special glass tubes to be made for experimentation, using a variety of different designs. The Hundred Nations had many skilled glass-blowers under contract to could perform the work, as we often have need of custom glassware and bulbs for our experiments with light generation, we simply could not tell them what these designs were for.

Da’anammi and I discussed the project over dinner that night, in our quarters. After a few glasses of sweet dessert wine the conversation shifted to a more personal level. That discussion extended well into the night. We were still talking when we heard the bugle of reveille in the morning. Living in a windowless basement, the passage of time often goes unnoticed by people like us, particularly when we are engrossed with serious matters. In this case, neither of us were bothered by it. Indeed, nights spent thus were becoming common for us.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. October 12, 1993 CY.

One of the gas-filled tubes had a strange accident today. We were testing a helium-neon mixture that typically generated a strong blue-green light, but one of the amplifying mirrors was apparently defective, and both of us assumed that the lamp had failed, until I noticed a little blue-green dot on the far wall of the lab. It was small, but very bright. I measured the diameter of the dot, and it matched up perfectly with the aperture of the reflecting mirror. The beam itself was invisible, of course, until it was reflected by something. Da’anammi traced the path of the beam using an aerosol sprayer that created a fine mist of water vapor, rendering the light beam visible as an unbroken, perfect line. When we turned off the lamp after almost an hour, we noticed it had left a burn mark on the painted surface of the wall precisely where the dot had been.

Da’anammi suggested we take safety precautions, if we were going to experiment with this discovery further. Some eye protection at the very least.

The first thought that crossed my mind, of course, was: “What would happen if we added more power?”

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. December 21, 1994 CY.

We prepared the weapon by clamping it down to the testing stand at one end of the laboratory. A section of armored hull from an ironclad warship was set on a bench at the other end. A massive dynamo powered by a coal-fired steam turbine roared in another section of the building, only slightly muted by intervening walls and soundproofed batting. Copper cables thick with rubber insulation connected the generator to banks of transformers, and from there to circuit breakers, then to the control panel, and finally to the weapon, which was a long metallic tube, wrapped in a blanket of asbestos insulation. There were also tanks of exotic gases, primarily carbon dioxide, with a blend of helium, neon, and trace gases needed to energize the mixture, connected to a system of valves and vacuum pumps that fed into and out of the tube.

The control panel had actually taken longer to design than the weapon, which was far simpler than I wanted anyone else to know. There was a fail-safe security measure in the panel that allowed only myself and Da’anammi to operate it.

Da’anammi handed out special safety goggles to the spectators – the representatives of the council as well as select military officers and scientists. The goggles were identical to the ones Da’anammi and I wore, made to block the specific frequency of infrared light that the device emitted.

I am still was not sure what to call the device. The politicians and military referred to it as “The Death Ray,” but that seemed hardly scientific.

It would help if I understood better how it worked. None of the current theories regarding light and excited gases explained the effect adequately, at least not from the British and Kanonsionni scientific journals he had access to. There had been a lot of progress in the field made in the last few years, and I have been eagerly devouring all the published works on optics and light amplification that I could get my hands on. However, there was little more than rumors from within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Germany, in particular, had apparently produced some highly respected physicists: Albert Michelson was a name that came up frequently when discussing research into the properties of light. Other names kept appearing in physics journals: Planck, Laue, Wien, Tesla, and Einstein; but finding any of their papers was impossible. Their published works were closely guarded secrets in these troubled times, and I was on the wrong side of the Eastern Ocean.

“Doctor Matla? Are you ready?” The general shouted over the noise of the generator.

“Yes,” I said. Da’anammi threw the switch for the power while I adjusted the dials on the control panel. Most were little more than combination locks that had to be turned to the correct numbers in the correct sequence, or the device would lock itself and remain non-functional until I turned another series of dials to unlock it.

The device hummed to life, mostly from the vacuum pumps and cooling fans. A final switch closed the electrical circuit for the power, and a bright red dot appeared on the piece of steel on the far wall. Sparks and vapor burst from the point of light. Just a few seconds, then I switched it off again.

“Power down, Da’anammi,” I said, already removing my goggles as I ran across the room.

The others gathered around as I inspected the steel plate.

“Did it work?” asked one of the scientists.

“How deep is the hole?” asked a general.

I said nothing. After a quick examination of the steel, taking measurements with a caliper, I stood and regarded the crowd.

“Please step back,” I said. Then I pushed the heavy steel plate off the bench. It slammed onto the concrete floor with a loud clang!

There, clearly, was a hole on the opposite side of the steel. Another hole of the same size, still smoldering, penetrated the concrete wall of the basement room.

After a stunned silence, the crowd of men burst into cheers and applause. All I knew, at that moment, was that Da’anammi was smiling, and nothing else mattered. I grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her in front of all those men, the politicians, generals, and scientists. I like to think they were cheering for us.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. July 1, 1996 CY.

With apologies to posterity, I have been much too busy to keep up my journal for the past year and a half.

The biggest news, of course, is that Da’anammi and I started sleeping together the same night we successfully demonstrated the weapon. We discussed marriage, and the fact that the Hundred Nations allows same sex weddings, while my former homeland does not. There was a time when that might have bothered me, but the Hundred Nations was my home now. The Obsidian Jaguar was the enemy, and I was never going back.

We decided to wait, however. Neither of us felt the need for a piece of paper. We were in love, and were happy with that. Someday, after the war was over, perhaps. But, no wedding plans for us yet. There was still too much work to do.

After conducting field tests from the back of a truck, using a series of dynamos mounted on trailers, we determined the range of the weapon was limited only by line-of-sight. After some deliberation about tactics and platforms, the military decided to mount the weapon on a specially built airship. Fortunately, helium for this purpose was routinely extracted from natural gas reserves in the Hundred Nations, which was the leading supplier for the rest of the world, and they were already masters of airship technology.

Due to the weight requirements, the airship would need to be larger than any built before. It had to have a lightweight rigid frame to support the engines and focusing tube. Because the power of the weapon was related to the length of the focusing tube, the design of the airship had it running straight through the center of the gas cells for the entire length – a total of 640 feet – and it had to be absolutely straight. There was almost no margin for error at all.

I designed a lightweight dynamo for the craft using an aluminum frame, powered by a kerosene engine with an aluminum block. There would be eight of them in total, each also turning a propeller to move the airship forward. The somewhat flattened shape of the craft, rounder along the top than the bottom, would generate lift as long as the airship was moving, which reduced the need for a larger volume of helium, since it was already substantial. It could hover for short periods at low altitude, but climbing would require considerable forward thrust.

The Hundred Nations now has a new method of smelting aluminum, once a rare and exotic metal, from common bauxite ore using an electrical process of my creation. This had required the construction of a hydro-electric plant and the prerequisite dam on the Potomac River. The entire project took months to complete, but the uses for mass-produced aluminum were already advancing the nations’ industry ahead of even the Ottomans.

The airship was dubbed “Unega Awohali” in the Tsalagi language, in keeping with the standard naming practices for military airships in the Hundred Nations. It meant “White Eagle”. By the time the airship were finished, I had come up with a name for the weapon, as well.

“The process involves light oscillation via stimulated emission of radiation,” I said to Da’anammi. “So we should call the device a LOSER.”

“I see,” Da’anammi said with a straight face. She failed to suppress a giggle, and then grinned as she tried to focus on her work.

“What? You don’t like the term?”

“Well,” she said, “I was just thinking that the process involves light amplification more than oscillation, so perhaps the correct name would be LASER?”

“LASER?” I pondered the acronym for a few minutes while tinkering with the internal wiring of the device. “I guess it is better than LOSER. The military will be happy with it, anyway. Thank you, darling.”

“You are welcome, Matla,” Da’anammi said, smiling broadly.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. July 5, 1996 CY.

The night burned. The faces of my island friends appeared before me one by one, then vanished in fire. The last was Amina, screaming. The screams echoed across the water, even as my head slipped below the surface. I felt my mouth and nose fill with seawater. I was drowning.

Chantico, the little sister of fire, danced in the flames.

I sat up in bed, instantly awake, with my heart pounding in my ears. The bed sheets were soaked with sweat. Reaching out in the darkness, I found Da’anammi beside me, and rested my hand on her hip for a moment to reassure myself that she was undisturbed by my stirring.

It was the night before the first field test of the airship. I wanted to be rested for the long day, but now was too distraught to go back to sleep. I fumbled into my housecoat, nightgown, and slippers, and then staggered to the kitchen, which, like the rest of our accommodations, was Spartan and functional in design. I flicked the light-switch and began to look in the cupboards for something to eat as the flickering fluorescent tubes found their legs.

I have never flown before, and the prospect of being aloft was simply too exciting for me. In addition, I was somewhat nervous about the test itself, and foresaw numerous ways in which it could go badly. Scenarios of disaster crowded out all other thoughts from my cranium.

There was the problem of rain and fog, for example. Water droplets in the air seemed to be highly efficient at dispersing light, including the amplified light of the LASER. The weapon would be completely useless in heavy rain or dense fog. This was a serious drawback in terms of battlefield effectiveness.

I reminded myself, yet again, that the Hundred Nations was the world leader in military airship design, and there was no reason to think the craft would fail. We had tested the LASER thoroughly. I knew it would perform well.

Still, there was much to be gained from this test, as well as much to lose.

I opened a package of salted pecans. Perhaps a full stomach would help me sleep.