I was not so naive to believe that we would magically stumble onto the optimal configuration on the first try.

Heck, even getting it to work somewhat on the first try would have been a win.

So I was not too concerned when the first series of tests only gave back a large smudge of indecipherable signal. With no variation to be found in the whole signal.

Well, that was a bit less than I had hoped, but it was still within expectations.

As the whole setup of the test took only around half an hour, it was not much of a loss. It was a bit strange that all 20 tests showed the same result though.

Unfortunately, the placement of the sensor network on the crystals was the main time sink in the setup, and thus it took even longer to move all the sensors than to set up the experiment in the first place.

Nonetheless, we all awaited the results of the experiment with bated breath. So when the results came in, we were a tad disappointed when it showed the very same featureless smudge.

Still, we were in the very first phase of the experiment, the first 20 of nearly 2000 crystals, the first two of a few hundred configurations of the sensors.

I was quite confident that we would get a serviceable result soon, and would be able to get a perfectly optimized system in a couple of weeks.

Thus when the third variation of the sensor network provided the exact same results, I was not too disheartened.

When the 20th variation showed no change and we decided to switch to the next set of crystals I was a bit disappointed.

After that, we decided to switch to testing the various crystals in the first phase to find those that worked in the current setup.

For the next day though. We already had way too much overtime to pay already.

When I arrived home I was greeted by a rather irate Lady Nibbles, who for the first time since Ben had gifted her to me had to forgo my presence for a whole day.

Oh boy was she angry. Naturally, I could not understand anything of her tirade, but it was clear that she was berating me for my absence. Vocally and energetically. It hurt a bit that she did not let me pet her, but she would calm down in time, I was sure.

And indeed, a few hours later, she cuddled with me in bed again.

The next morning, with renewed enthusiasm, the minions, Maynard, and I changed out the crystals with the next set.

And the next after that. And the next. I had Warden set a timer to limit us to eight hours of work. Which resulted in 13 sets of crystals. 260 for the day. 280 with the original 20.

And the result was… the exact same bland smudge. Every! Single! Time!. No variation at all.

Now it was time to become a little bit frustrated.

Nibbles was in no way happier than the day before, though her tirade seemed to be a different one than the last one.

Still, we were in the early phase of the experiment, and we had still hundreds of thousands of combinations of crystals and sensor placements to do.

However, the enthusiasm had cooled somewhat.

At the end of the first week, it had become a bit of a slog. It would have been different if we had at least some variation, any variation of the results. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the intensity of the uniform smudge varied with the crystal used, though that hardly let us analyze the results in any way.

Still, we soldiered on, though I was not there all day anymore. Yes, my cat had gotten to me, and I spent at least part of the day with her.

Halfway through the second week, still without any different result, we were all way dejected. We still crawled forward, but mostly by going through the motions.

And frankly, I was losing my mind over it. I’d gone over the math in question four times by the end of the second week, and I could not even guess how often Warden had checked it. It remained the same.

Either this was the first prediction of the Seeberger Equation that was downright wrong, or this should work. I could not even fathom the consequences of the former, but the latter simply refused to manifest.

The height of frustration though was that it remained the same, regardless of what sensor configuration we chose. Only the choice of the crystal brought any variance at all. And not one that was in the slightest degree useful.

In the end, both Maynard and I were at our wits end about it, when we sat in the C-suite meeting on June 11th, and apparently, it was quite visible.

During the whole meeting, the others gave us two concerned looks. The meeting itself was not that exciting.

Profits went up again, to now a bit below $180 billion per month, and manufacturing capacity increased despite only the one Constructor being available.

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The first rumors of the cold fusion reactor had leaked and we had gotten the first requests, and Naveen informed us that he had hired Mark to work on our standard weapon technology.

The first few blocks of Manhattan had been cleared and it seemed as if we finally managed to get negotiations for the MTA started. Huzza!

Yeah, it was important, it was a big step forward. Though frankly, I was not quite in the mood to celebrate.

And the concerned looks became increasingly overt.

Finally, Michael seemed to have had enough and banged his fist onto the table.

“What the F is wrong with you two? You’ve been moping around for over a week. And now… you sit here as if you were waiting for your execution.”

It took me a moment to realize that he spoke to me and Maynard, who was a tad faster in his reaction.

“It’s… nothing really. Just an experiment that doesn’t want to go the way we want it to. And we just can’t figure out why.”

I just rolled my eyes, while Maynard growled:

“What is so hard to understand? We have an experiment that is just not working. Not working in a way we did not expect, but not working at all. And we simply can’t figure out what is wrong.”

Tiffany frowned and shook her head confused.

“But… if it is not working, then you have learned something, right? I thought that was the point of science. Try things and see what works and what doesn’t.”

“In general, you are right. But this… we based the experiment on the Seeberger Equation. The math tells us that it has to work in some way.

That means either the experiment has to work, the Seeberger Equation is wrong in this instance, or we made a big mistake in the math. Dozens of times, which points to a systematic failure.

And as the experiment does not work, it leaves the other two, and none of them is a pleasant option. So yeah, we are frustrated.”

I finished the explanation with a sigh.

For a moment, nobody said anything, and the silence was frankly nice. Then Maggie mused aloud:

“Hm… maybe… I don’t know, but maybe if you tell us exactly what you are doing and what is going wrong, we can help you?”

Maynard scoffed:

“For real? We have over a hundred physicists working on it. Yes, you all are smart, but this is not your specialty. What do you think you can do that not one of the trained experts could do?”

Michael answered softly:

“Honestly, probably not much. But sometimes a slightly different perspective helps. And the least it will do is let you vent a bit.”

Maynard sighed while he shook his head, though I closed my eyes, and then began to explain the experiment.

The crystals, the grav pulse, and the theory that it should make the individual molecules, and atoms visible.

How we instead got just a uniform blob.

After a few seconds, Alena, who seemed a bit confused, asked:

“What crystals? They have to be new, or somebody would have done this experiment a long time ago, but… “

As an answer, Maynard growled:

“Those crystals!” while he pulled out the 5-D Lonsdaleite crystal he had taken to carry in his pocket like some lucky charm, and threw it onto the table.

“As Vivian has just explained, we are talking about five-dimensional crystals.”

He seemed to miss the raptured looks on the faces of the others. Well, except Travis.

After a few moments, Tiffany shakily said:

“That… that is beautiful. It is… how could you make something that beautiful?”

Marcel, equally in awe, told us:

“We can sell those. Fuck, we can sell those for a fortune.”

That made me frown.

“But… that is just carbon. Sure, in a 5-D structure, but still just cheap carbon. It is worthless. If you want some, we can make it by the megaton.”

“Can anybody else make it?”

“No… not without the multi-D adaption of the NADA. Why?”

“Then the price will be determined by how much we decide to sell. If we keep the amounts low enough we can demand several million per carat. And the rich people will pay for it.”

At that moment, Travis chipped in:

“What are you talking about? That is just a boring brown crystal. Nobody will pay more than a few 100 ITB for this thing.”

Tiffany turned to him and hissed:

“Are you blind? Brown? There is nothing brown on that thing.”

I sighed and raised my hand.

“You should stop right there. I don’t know why, but if you view this thing remotely, like with a camera, or an Incarnate, it is just a boring brown crystal. The true effect only happens if you see it with your own eyes.”

That made Tiffany, heck, all of them, turn to me.

Jessi was the one who asked:

“What? How can that be?”

I rolled my eyes.

“I did use the words ‘I don’t know why’ right? I did not forget them? If I did, well, then I don’t know why. We have just managed to document the effect.”

“No, you did not forget them, but… that is really strange. What does Seeberger say to this?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know. I was not quite in the mood to look to explain this quirk when I spent virtual months trying to figure out why the experiment did not work.”

That was the moment when Ken cleared his throat.

“About that… if I understand that right, this crystal should pick up any source of gravity, right?”

I sighed.

“Yes, right.”

“Including all the sources like for example the gravity field of Earth?”

“Yes. And we had the same thought. But the gravity field of Earth is in the frame of the experiment constant.

Oh, it changes, but at those distances, these changes are in the range of a billionth of a percent.”

“Oh… that is good. But I did not think about that especially. What I thought was that this crystal would pick up all the grav coils in the vicinity. The coils you tried to use in your experiment, the coils that the weapons lab uses to refine the grav guns, the coils that the conveyors use, and the replicators.

The coils of the three Valkyries that are on hot standby. Would that not, I don’t know, influence the experiment?”

For some long long seconds, I could just stare at Ken in disbelief, followed by banging my head on the table.

Maynard was a tad less prim and exclaimed loudly:

“The Fuck? Is that shit real? We have… oh shit, there will be so many long faces…”

I just groaned and waved vaguely in his direction. Michael on the other hand put a hand softly on my shoulder.

“Hey… calm down. It can’t be that bad.”

I sighed and lifted my head, looking at him.

“It is that bad. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to… miss something this fundamental and obvious?”

“So you made a mistake? Shit happens, you are just human. Now you know it and can compensate for it.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly shook my head.

“There is no compensating for it. This is… like checking how bright a candle is while holding it directly into the sun. The grav coils are way too strong to filter out.”

I shook my head again.

“Whelp, that was that. I fear I won’t be able to create your harvester soon. Sorry. And sorry to all of you, but I am going home now. I need to get my head clear.”

Marcel frowned:

“But… we are not done yet. We have to decide about the crystals. How we call them, how much we sell of them. The whole thing.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t care. You decide, and I give my vote to the rest of you.”

And yes, in hindsight, I know that that was a mistake. Just, at that moment, I honestly did not care.