"...last item on my agenda," Principal Stewart glanced at the teachers seated around the long conference table, "I've received a formidable-looking approval notice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the mail. Anyone know what that's about?"
"Ah... must be for the application I submitted for Paige Patterson's physics project," Mr. Turner looked pleased, then continued at the Principal's raised brow, "As you may recall the Pattersons moved here from California very recently. They chose Cardiff High for its excellent STEM program. Specifically because I assured them I could secure approval for Miss Patterson through my contacts at the NRC."
"I remember, the parents are scientists," Stewart pursed his lips, "The girl has a gift for physics. You are sure this is quite safe?"
"The radiation dose is well within safe limits even at maximum output," Turner nodded, "No more than what an airline crew is exposed to in terms of equivalent neutron penetration. The unit is designed to fail safely with no possibility of leakage. I have reviewed the design extensively."
"You didn't exactly answer the question, did you, eh Turner?" chuckled a cantankerous old man who was the biology teacher, "That school trip you chaperoned to Brookhaven wasn't supposed to run into a subatomic wormhole either."
"Are you seriously blaming me for what happened there?" Turner asked coldly, "Weren't you mentoring Judith Fuller before her horrific accident at her father's biotech lab? At least sub atomic particles don't mutate..."
"I had absolutely no control over that lab..."
"Enough," Stewart snapped, wearily passing his hand over his face, "If Mr. Turner says it's safe, I'm inclined to take the risk, given his credentials."
"I still don't like it," Mrs. Holt, the chemistry teacher, muttered, "I am all for pushing the envelope with science projects, but this is stretching it..."
"It's more than just a science project, Amanda," Turner retorted, "Need I remind anyone what this potentially means for the school? Julia Thornton has convinced her venture capitalist buddies at Dragon's Egg - the startup incubator - to accept applications from Portsmouth school seniors this year. Only the very best have a chance at funding and Paige Patterson certainly qualifies as such."
"I hear you, Mrs. Holt," Principal Stewart sighed, "but I can't pass up an opportunity to put Cardiff High on the map."
"I'm surprised the superintendent is backing this," one of the teachers remarked, triggering spasms of distaste around the table at the mention of the name. The superintendent was loathed with a passion, given his penny-pinching stance on teachers' compensation in stark contrast to his own lavish salary.
"Not exactly," the Principal's lips twitched, "but I do have Mrs. Thornton's backing to pull out all the stops for the Dragon's Egg competition. She is as keen as I am to show what top-notch public school education looks like. Well, that's all I have for today. Any walk-ins?"
The silence was punctuated by the dying whine of the overhead projector. Stewart cleared his throat and adopted an encouraging tone, "Um... how about personal stories, anecdotes, that sort of thing?"
The silence turned incredulous. Mrs. Holt coughed, "Personal stories, Mr. Stewart?"
"Of course," the Principal beamed, "I was reading the other day that encouraging my staff to share their challenges and experiences in the classroom builds rapport. Your stories from the trenches, so to speak. Come on now, don't be shocked. I too was a teacher once, you know."
"Well...I could use a second opinion," Mr. Emerson, the math teacher, coughed nervously, "It's about Brandon Cox in junior grade."
"The varsity quarterback?" the Principal frowned, "Has he failed his math test again?"
"No, that's the thing," Emerson shook his head distractedly, "He's doing fine on his tests."
"Well, good then!" the Principal looked relieved, "I was getting rather tired of giving him a free pass academically."
"He's doing too well," Emerson spread his hands, "He's gone from a failing grade to one of my top performers in short order. I mean, how is that possible?"
"You suspect cheating?" Mrs. Holt scowled.
"I did at first," Emerson barked an hysterical laugh, "But then I asked Brandon to go over the test problems with me. He correctly derived answers using higher dimensional geometry and other concepts I'd expect from a grad student."
"Is this your idea of a joke?" Principal Stewart asked curtly, "Are we talking about the same Brandon?"
"No joke," Emerson shivered in reverence, "There was one problem he solved by deriving Euler's Formula for complex numbers from first principles. All the way from number theory! When I pressed him Brandon said he'd found a special tutor but wouldn't say who it was."
Miss Evans, assistant coach for varsity girls tennis, broke the startled silence, "That reminds me of this girl in my team... Carmen Jones. Plays a decent game, but no innate talent for tennis. Then suddenly wins every game. I thought it was a hot hand, a streak of luck. But I just moved her from junior varisty to play against the senior girls. Still keeps winning."
Two more teachers chimed in with examples of students who had shown recent startling spikes in academic or atheletic performance.
"It can't be illegal nootropics unless all these late bloomers have figured out ways to fool the drug tests," Stewart looked around the table at his staff who faces mirrored his own puzzlement, "But there was one other student who showed remarkable improvement in academics at the start of the school year. After that incident at Brookhaven."
"Sean Cook," Turner nodded. If he was annoyed at Brookhaven being mentioned again, he didn't show it.
"Are you suggesting these recent cases are related to Sean?" Mrs. Holt looked skeptical, "Like a mysterious contagion, but in a good way?"
"I have a simpler explanation," Turner laughed suddenly, "I think Sean is coaching these... late bloomers."
"One student is able to coach them in all these areas?" Miss Evans scoffed,"You got to be shitting me. Are they all his friends?"
"Not exactly," Turner smiled, "But they are all close to Jason Fuller. Anyone who follows the social scene at Cardiff High is aware of the feud between the Fuller heir and Sean Cook."
"I'm not following," Stewart frowned, "Why would Sean lift a finger to help out Jason's friends."
"One knows the lion by it's claws, Principal Stewart," Turner chuckled, "Perhaps we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."
#
Sean filed into AP Physics, pausing involuntarily when he caught the eye of Phyllis Gibbs. The heiress looked away quickly. It rankled Sean that Phyllis hadn't apologized for roughing him up over what had been a misunderstanding. Someone pushed into his back making him stumble.
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"Hey, watch it," Sean turned in annoyance. His expression darkened when he spotted Jason Fuller four places behind him.
"Keep it moving, punk," Jason grinned unpleasantly, "Can't have the low-life slowing us down."
Sean slid into his seat next to Mei-Ling who flashed a sympathetic smile. Jason turned away from the aisle towards his chosen spot, Tiffany and Carmen shadowing him like royal maids-of-honor. Tiffany held Sean's gaze for a moment in unspoken solidarity. Carmen's lips turned up in a slight smile without malice. The slow process of turning Jason's clique was well under way. While nothing had changed inside class, Sean had noticed that the girls who usually hung around Jason outside class were now in short supply. Each suddenly busy pursuing her passion with newfound confidence, like satellites in orbit getting a boost from Sean to break away from Jason.
The girl behind Sean in the queue took her seat across the aisle, politely nodding to Sean.
"Cool glasses, Andrea," Sean nodded back, "How are the music lessons coming along?"
"Mu... music lessons?" Andrea froze.
"Yeah, isn't that like your hobby?" Sean raised a brow, "Acoustic instruments?"
"I like guitar," Andrea nodded slowly, "but how did you know? Have you been snooping on me?"
To perform on stage was Andrea's fondest dream, but one she hadn't shared with even her close friends for fear of being laughed at. Private guitar lessons and writing her own songs in the privacy of her home hadn't been enough to break her out of her shell. She was sure she hadn't mentioned it in school unless it had been a slip of tongue.
"Of course not," Sean laughed, "I just have an eye for talent, you know."
Andrea stared at him, hope blossoming, "You... you do?"
No stranger to high school drama, she automatically discounted rumors, but perhaps there was something to what her friends insisted about Sean enabling impossible dreams.
"Sure, knock yourself out," Sean smiled encouragingly and turned away to watch Tiffany's profile. But his smile lingered. Bingo, Trawling through student social media with a simple script looked promising. While people weren't all alike, they tended to cluster based on developmental and cultural histories. Could you figure out a student's inner most drives if they shared the same socio-economic markers with others whose drives were mapped? Take the conflicting utility functions that described human behavior and normalize them numerically or logically. Then plot them on higher-dimensional vector space, all that individuality collapsing to a single point. Now the cosine-distance between any two vectors, any two people, was an indication of how similar those two people where. There was enough Big Data floating around in public that Sean was hoping to gain insight about anyone he wanted to. One girl in particular. Tiffany Brooks.
Although Sean was tormented by her image, the dopamine surge stopped him from tearing his gaze away from her. For all that he was heir to all human knowledge Sean couldn't help being human, a rope stretched over the abyss between animal and superman as Nietzsche had described. Being human sucked. Sean had a growing suspicion that Tiffany was using him just so there wouldn't be so many girls competing for Jason's attention. Even if Jason was abusing her, Stockholm Syndrome was a thing. But two could play that game. Sean intended to make Tiffany like him whether her hate for Jason was real or feigned. But the girl was an enigma, defying easy categorization as cheerleader or nerd. Tell me everything about your life, Tiffany, so I may solve the shape of your utility functions...
Movement at the door caught his attention. Turner walked in wheeling what looked like a large fan, followed by a girl Sean hadn't seen before. He stared. Rich dark hair tumbled around a face that might have belonged on Teen Vogue. But it was her smile that caught his attention. It was a warm, unassuming, girl-next-door kind of smile without a hint of reserve or awareness of her own... perfection. The smile triggered memories of Judith Fuller which was like a punch to his gut, even if this girl didn't look anything like her. Sean missed Jason's sister, missed her smile, and hoped she was adjusting well to her new school.
"Who is that?" Sean muttered.
"Oh, that's Paige Patterson," Randall supplied helpfully from behind, "New girl from California. Joined here the week you were... suspended. She's a senior, but Jason has already made a move on her. The senior boys are pissed."
"What," Sean scowled as Jason waved to the new girl and got a dimpled grin in return. Why did Jason get all the best looking girls, Sean yelled to himself, wasn't it enough that he got all the best looking stuff? Isolating Jason from his social circle was like isolating a tumor from its blood supply. Each time a connection was severed a new one took its place. But if Jason was the tumor, then Sean was the surgeon who wouldn't rest until it was excised.
"Class, may I have your attention please," Turner smiled and gestured to Paige, "I'd like to introduce a talented young woman who has recently joined us from the West Coast. Paige Patterson has a rare genius for practical physics that makes her a prime candidate for the Dragon's Egg Tech Competition."
Sean had seen posters for the competition around the school, but hadn't given it much thought.
"...so thrilled with her creation," Turner continued, "that I've asked her to give a demonstration to each grade. Without further ado, I'll let Paige take over." Turner walked back to stand behind his desk, leaving the industrial grade blower he'd dragged to one side.
"Thank you, Mr. Turner," Paige smiled and nodded. She slipped off the backpack she'd been wearing and dropped it on Turner's desk. She pulled out a water-filled glass cylinder the size of a soda-can capped at both ends and held it out vertically, the shiny metal base resting on her palm. The liquid inside was packed with metal rods. With the other hand she lifted the thick cables trailing from the industrial blower and snapped the alligator clips onto leads poking out the upper and lower rims of the cannister. She then grabbed the upper cap and pulled, the inch-thick metal parting in two and lifting the rods suspended in water. The water began to glow a brilliant blue, backlighting the radiation trefoil stencilled on the glass.
"Fucking shit," Sean muttered. For a moment he was back in the South Caucasus mountains fighting for control of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The moment passed. The blower was turning now, picking up speed.
"The Patterson Pocket Reactor uses less than an ounce of fissile uranium," Paige continued with her obviously practiced speech, shouting above the roar of the blower, "and is capable of powering this entire school at full output." Hair and books were flapping around in the gale. Paige pushed down the control rods and the gale shut down. The blue glow faded.
"That was awesome!" yells and claps echoed around the room. Sean smiled.
"Question time," Turner clapped and stepped forward, "Can anyone tell me what the blue glow was? No, not you Sean. Yes, Mei Ling?"
"Cherenkov radiation," Mei Ling grinned maniacally, "when charged particles in a reactor travel faster than the speed of light in water."
"Correct," Turner smiled and looked around, "How was Paige able to power the fan without using a steam turbine for energy conversion?"
"Some kind of thermoelectric generator?" ventured Phyllis.
"Very good, Miss Gibbs," Turner looked pleased, "A bright bunch, aren't we. I'll open up the floor for questions."
"Is it dangerous... what about the radiation... what if it breaks..." the questions tumbled.
"The leaded glass is tough enough to survive a drop from a skyscraper. A composite material my mother invented," Paige beamed, "It filters all of the gamma and most of the neutron radiation, apart from being a perfect thermal insulator. You'd have to hold and run the reactor for a really really long time to absorb anything like an unsafe dose."
"What if it goes super critical or something?"
"The light water moderator provides a negative feedback loop upto a point," Paige nodded, "as the water gets hotter it loses density which means less number of thermal neutrons to power the reaction. But as an ultimate failsafe I've specially designed the fuel core to melt and lose its neutron cross-section if the water reaches boiling."
If Sean hadn't been smitten with Tiffany Brooks, he'd have probably fallen in love with Paige Patterson right there. There was no way he was letting Jason have her.
He raised his hand, "Are you still exploiting the nuclear resonance of U-235 to achieve room-temperature fission?"
"Yes," Paige blinked and then smiled, "Although you are the first to ask me that in my demos."
"Aren't you concerned about ambient neutron reflectors bringing your core to super-criticality?" Sean frowned.
"That is a theoretical concern, correct," Paige nodded slowly, lifting the reactor and waving her hand around it, "but extremely unlikely in the real world. The reflector would have to be shaped with the right focal length to be a risk."
Sean nodded satisfied. Paige bowed to thunderous applause and left the classroom smiling. She gave a special wave to Jason, but her eyes flickered to Sean as she passed the doorway.
END OF CHAPTER