Doubling

“That would take a while to explain. Everyone here is eager to hear about your Astrophage findings. Let’s start with that.”

I shuffled to the front of the room and sat awkwardly at the head of the table. All eyes turned to me.

So I told them. I told them all about the wooden closet experiments. I explained all my tests, what I did for each one, and how I did them. Then I explained my conclusions: I told them my hypothesis about the Astrophage life-cycle, how it works, and why. There were a few questions from the assembled scientists and politicos, but mostly they just listened and took notes. Several had translators whispering in their ear during the process.

“So…yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty much everything. I mean—it’s not rigorously tested yet but it seems pretty simple.”

German Guy raised his hand. “Would it be possible to breed Astrophage on a large scale?”

Everyone leaned forward a little. Apparently this was a pretty important question and it was on everyone’s mind. I was taken aback by the sudden intensity of the room.

Even Stratt seemed unusually interested. “Well?” she said. “Please answer Minister Voigt.”

“Sure,” I said. “I mean…why not?”

“How would you do it?” asked Stratt.

“I guess I’d make a big elbow-shaped ceramic pipe and fill it with carbon dioxide. Make one end of it as hot as you can get it and have a bright light there. Wrap a magnetic coil around it to simulate the magnetic field of the sun. Put an IR light emitter at the other end of the elbow and have it emit light at 4.26 and 18.31 microns. Make the inside of the pipe as black as you can. That should do it.”

“How does that ‘do it’?” she said.

I shrugged. “The Astrophage will gather energy at the ‘sun’ side and when they’re ready to breed, they’ll follow that magnetic field to the pipe’s elbow. They’ll see the IR light at the other end and head toward it. Seeing that light and being exposed to carbon dioxide makes them breed. Then the parent and daughter cells will go back to the sun side. Simple enough.”

A political-looking man raised his hand and spoke with some kind of African accent. “How much Astrophage could be made this way? How fast is the process?”

“It would have a doubling time,” I said. “Like algae or bacteria. I don’t know how long it is, but considering the sun is getting dim it must be pretty quick.”

A woman in a lab coat had been on her phone. She set it down, then spoke with a thick Chinese accent. “Our scientists have reproduced your results.”

Minister Voigt scowled at her. “How did you even know his process? He just told us!”

“Spies, presumably,” said Stratt.

The German huffed. “How dare you circumvent us with—”

“Shush,” said Stratt. “We’re past all that. Ms. Xi, do you have any additional information to share?”

“Yes,” she said. “We estimate the doubling time to be just over eight days, under optimal conditions.”

***

Chapter 5