Alistair woke up to his alarm. He hated this song… He found that setting the alarm to a good song did not seem to wake him up. He thought of the most annoying song he could think of and set it back in his freshmen year of college. It has worked every morning since, the song he chose was “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.

Groaning he switched off his phone alarm and rolled out of bed. His phone stated that it was 7:00 PM. A solid 6 hours of sleep. Alistair had pulled an all-nighter in the lab the night before. He needed to get the last calibrations set for the solar array and ran into a snag after the latest update threw all of the panels off sync. He finally managed to fix it around noon that day and was completely beat.

Tomorrow is the day. His bio-mechanical engineering project was set to have a full test done with his professor along with a big-wig government representative from the Department of Energy. If all goes well, we will be set for life and hopefully save the world, at least from the energy crisis.

Alistair checked his phone for messages and finds that he has an email from his project partner Beth.

———

Alistair,

I know you said you were coming in after hours to do your finishing touches before tomorrow’s test, but I wanted to let you know that we finished synthesizing the serum and injected it into the battery. As of the time of this email, the battery readings are all within optimal levels, So we should be all good for the test tomorrow. This is very exciting and can't wait to show the world what this new energy generator can do. Thank you for including me in this and I can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

Beth

———

Alistair finished reading the email his project partner had sent him before he arrived at the lab. She apparently injected the new serum they both came up with to improve energy storage efficiency by an order of magnitude. This was great news. This meant that tomorrow’s test should show promising results since the professor is only expecting half of the energy storage limit we originally projected.

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Alistair had proposed a new type of energy generator that also stores the energy generated safely and for extended periods of time. He was inspired by the way trees grow by absorbing solar energy and carbon dioxide which then produces energy for the plant and subsequently gives off oxygen as a byproduct. In order to make his generator scale to the energy needs of the average person on the planet he needed to develop a concentrated serum that rapidly supplied the generator with carbon dioxide while also absorbing more and condensing it to refill the serum cartridge to make the generator self-sufficient and independent.

The new serum that Beth installed showed the best results in the simulator. It not only balanced the solar load with the correct amount of carbon dioxide but also allowed for the occasional deviance that occurred with respect to cloud cover and nighttime. Not only would this battery help solve the energy crisis around the world, but it would help clean Earth’s atmosphere as well by lowering the CO2 levels.

The more Alistair thought about the experiment they would conduct tomorrow the more impatient he felt. Maybe just a preliminary pre-test to make sure everything is running smoothly. Alistair walked over to the Generator and double-checked Beth’s work and made sure the readings were still within parameters.

After fifteen minutes of looking over the settings he initiated the video log to record his “pre-test.” His heart racing, he pressed the initiate button on his tablet that activated the UV lights. Because it was night time they had to simulate sunlight through the use of the industrial-sized UV Lights set up around the proprietary solar absorption array.

As soon as Alistair turned on the lights he saw the machine start glowing a brilliant yellow and orange swirling around the tube that held the battery and serum. The battery level indicator started ticking up steadily, already passing five percent. Alistair was amazed, not only was it working but the generator was producing more than they had projected at a faster rate than even their most optimistic projections indicated.

Alistair set a timer for the pre-test for 5 minutes, after that time the test would shut down automatically and he would assess exactly how much energy was generated and stored.

As Alistair watched the experiment exceed his expectations, thoughts of how he got there started flashing through his mind, what was, what will come of this, everything. He felt so excited and was enjoying his thoughts so much that he didn’t notice the first beep, or the second, only after the third he was able to snap out of his Nobel Prize speech he was reciting before his friends, family, and colleagues. He glanced at the display that was now flashing red.

Time Left: 0:36

Alistair checked the energy readouts and found that the battery was nearly at capacity and he needed to quickly shut it down. He reached for the ‘Abort’ button but as he touched it, an arc of electricity met his finger and the serum canister and battery exploded.

Then there was nothing.