The Perpetual Motion Club (10 page)

Ideas came into her head at such times. She would pull out a paper and pencil from under the pillow, turn on the light by the bed, and scribble a quick Carnot diagram. She’d look at it from all angles, considering its flaws, engaging its possibilities. At dawn sleep would finally cease the perpetual motion in her brain.

She floated new ideas by her online chat mates, getting shot down or encouraged depending on who was there at the time.

She came up with an idea for an electron dynamo. Something like a fuel cell, only instead of recombining H2 and O2 molecules, it would give off free radicals which would create an electrically conductive plasma. The electric current from the dynamo could be used to power a small toy, like a Barbie Doll windmill maybe, anything to prove a perpetual motion point.

The idea fell through when she realized the water needed to power it would be consumed, requiring replenishment and hence breaking the PM cycle. Maybe if it was placed in a river it would work, she surmised. But like solar power, it would be a system violating the rules for PMMs. The sun seems infinite, but it is not. Not only does it go down at night, but someday, in 5 billion years, give or take a million, it will burn itself out and no longer be available for providing energy. It’s not really a PMM. Elsa was a purist. No sun, no water wheels, no electron dynamo.

Ever searching, she learned what went on in the unattainable PMMs—the over-unity and entropy machines. For her project she wanted to invent a machine like the new ones that used zero point energy or collected it from a dimension beyond the third. Although unable to supply the materials for the project (or the extra dimension for that matter), she could still draw up a model on a six foot sheet of enameled plywood. Color coded lines could indicate the energy cycle and usable work created. Side bars could point out how the various sections worked. Footnotes could direct the viewer to published sources that provided the physics. Created with excellent taste and based on real science and proven principles, her machine would be aesthetically pleasing as well as scientifically correct.

The sleepless nights dragged on. In order to make up the lost rest, Elsa often dozed in world history and English class. Her work there became muddled and thin. If she managed to stay awake, she daydreamed. She saw engine loops, heating and cooling systems, energy extracted and then put back, everywhere.

The shrinking of the swan pond behind the school due to evaporation on a hot day returned condensation to the surrounding lawn during the cool night. A source of energy maybe?

The conversion of oxygen to carbon dioxide as evidenced by the rise and fall of Justin Blaine’s shoulders as he breathed in and out during a nap was some sort of work producing cycle.

The congealing of eggs on the cooking pan or the drying of newly applied floor wax held some sort of meaning in terms of potential energy.

Surely the cut of her shin and later scarring could be tapped in some way.

What about the disfigurement of the toothpaste tube as its contents are slowly, day by day, extracted? What was in it for the world, energy-wise?

The universe as closed system was perfect and all variation accounted for. It was just a matter of identifying all the variables if you want to define it. Only because the shape of the toothpaste tube is hard to measure does the world seem open and uncontrolled. If she could get a handle on the potential of the toothpaste tube she could define her world, herself, her problems with her mother and the hateful Jason Bridges and the twerpish Jimmy Bacomb.

Jimmy Bacomb? Problems? Maybe. No matter. She’d solve them all.

Geometry remained the sole class in which she maintained attention. Parallel lines, a hypotenuse, equal angles: they all held answers to the perpetual motion mystery. You could understand the physics if you knew what the terms of geometry meant. She applied newly learned theorems to whatever device she was working on at home. Equal and opposite angles on a line related to equal and opposite forces of magnets. Everything was relevant. Regardless of her lack of attention elsewhere, in geometry she learned faster and retained more than anybody else in class. Mr. Brown beamed.

CHAPTER NINE

The first week of November came along with the invitation to join the Science Society. Elsa knew it was coming by the way Mr. Brown upped the familiarity by a notch. He nodded to her as she left the class each day. He sought out her eyes during his lectures, putting pressure on her, willing her to join his squad of ubergeeks.

Elsa mindlessly opened the official envelope with the Northawken High return address without anticipation and immediately stowed the invitation in her pack. She was not prepared for the showdown with her mother. Bad enough she’d have to deal with Mr. Brown.

She took off for school before Lainie had a chance to interrogate her about it, and as soon as she stepped out to the street, she installed the earbud for a minute of iHigh.

She headed for the corner in front of the Hatchner’s Colorado Spruce. May had once used it as an altar, accidentally starting the thing on fire. The tree no longer bore marks of the incident, and the girls themselves had forgotten all about their junior high hijinx, but it remained their habitual meeting place just for their fondness of it. They fell in together at the corner and headed off toward school.

“So you joining?” May said.

“I don’t know, I guess so. My mom wants me to join.”

“She’s right.”

“No she’s not. It’s just a corny social thing. They don’t do any interesting science, just field trips and stuff.”

“Oh, like to the Red Rock Convention Center maybe?”

“Ugh!”

“Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, it’ll hold you back if you don’t join.”

“Yeah, yeah. You sound like my mom. She doesn’t get that I could be doing better things with my time than hanging around a bunch of self-satisfied . . . I don’t knows.”

“Actually,
you
sound like your mom.”

Elsa looked at her friend. “Really?”

May shrugged.

“Well, If I do join, it’ll only be because you’re in it,” Elsa said.

“I’m not joining.”

“What?” Elsa stopped walking. She watched May move forward alone. May had recently Marcelled her hair and the ringlets plastered to her scalp made it seem smallish, pinheaded compared to the mound of backpack and fall rain parka covering it. Elsa ran to catch up.

“So you’re trying to get me to join, but you’re not?”

“Didn’t get invited,” May said emotionlessly, as if it was expected, deserved, and not a problem.

“How come?”

May turned dead on to Elsa. “How the eff should I know?” she said, and then resumed her trudge to school.

They said nothing more. When they passed a group of anti-Rifs protesting on the stoop of the rec center a block from school, they were so locked up inside their own thoughts, neither remarked on the threat. Even when the protesters bobbed the “You See!” signage up and down at them, they didn’t notice.

The group’s power around town was limited by a no verbalizing mandate they’d given themselves. It was an attempt to be silent and invoke the previous century’s successful pro-gay movement that used the “silence=death” slogan. This tacit protest was too subtle for the most part. They gained few believers. On the other hand, the non-threatening method had people starting to loosen up around them. It was a politically smart move considering most people thought the unidentified boy was murdered by one of their number. This misguided mandate made them seem less scary.

But that’s not why May and Elsa ignored them. May was too distressed about the Science Society. And Elsa was too distressed about May. A fireball could descend from heaven faster than the laws of physics allowed and neither one would have noticed.

***

Fourth period geometry. Time for some action. As the students filed out of Mr. Brown’s classroom at the end of the hour, Elsa hung back, something she would never do under normal circumstances.

“Mr. Brown,” she said, after the last classmate had left. She was standing on the opposite side of the bench from him. He turned from channel surfing with the CalcuScreen, saw it was Elsa, and set the remote down. He casually sat on the corner of the table top, relaxing into a receptive, help-the-student mode. “What is it, Elsa?” he said.

“Can I shut the door?”

“Surely,” Mr. Brown hopped up and moved to close the door for her. A student had been on the verge of entering the classroom, but Mr. Brown held up the “wait-a-sec” finger through the window as he pulled the door to. He returned to the edge of the table and waited, all ears, for Elsa to pour out her troubles, or maybe personally thank him for the invitation to the Science Society.

Elsa inhaled deeply and stated, “May Sedley hasn’t . . . well, she didn’t get invited to the Science Society.”

“Uh,” Mr. Brown faltered. He hadn’t been expecting that. This was a different problem. A possible glitch in the teacher/student relationship. He watched his foot dangling off the desk for a few moments and then looked up. “Yes,” he said, pushing his lips together to brace himself and her for the truth. “Not everyone gets invited.”

“But why not May? She has good grades.”

“Good grades, yes,” he drew out the yes as if he was trying to remember if May Sedley actually had received good grades. “But not so much in the science area. She shows little aptitude for it, no passion.”

Elsa’s left eyebrow twitched. She wasn’t sure what having passion was. Did she have passion? Yes. She did. For the new, tall boy. And for the Perpetual Motion Club. Did anyone else have passion? Did J.J. Walsh, Johnny Michaels, Lisa Gribbs, Jabby Tumms? These were the upper echelon in the science classes at Northawken high. Did they moon over variables, frog’s intestines, Pythagoras, Leakey, Newton, Gould, the Kreb’s cycle, reproductive cycles (well, maybe reproductive cycles), but seriously, did they show passion? She grabbed at straws for a comeback.

“But I was invited, I don’t have any . . . ”

“Elsa, you’re a top student in science. Your geometry comes easy to you because you are interested in it. You don’t think we can see that? Grades indicate passion. May’s science grades tell the story.”

He hesitated momentarily as he tried envisioning May Sedley’s contribution to his stats. He saw nothing.

“But she’s the one with the passion,” Elsa said. “She wants to join.”

“She has a passion for an exclusionary organization,” Mr. Brown was getting his steam back. “If anyone could join, it would have no meaning, and nobody would get passionate about it.”

“I don’t understand,” Elsa said.

“You don’t need to.” Mr. Brown jumped off the desk and took Elsa’s arm to move her toward the door. “Just be glad you’ve been invited.”

“But I’m not going to join.”

Mr. Brown stopped and pulled her back to the desk area. “Elsa, you need to be in the Science Society. It will propel you to your place in the community. You could have a bright future. With this on your resume you’ll be on course for that future.”

Elsa conjured a vision of her bright future, trapped in programming mode for the rest of her life, surrounded by programmers discussing coding theory, never able to communicate with anyone with a different type of talent—athletic, for example.

When Elsa didn’t respond, Mr. Brown rubbed at his pencil mustache with his index finger. He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising with it. “What is it you want to do with your life?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe teach physics at University. Some place where I could have time to dabble.”

“Dabble?”

“You know fiddle with the Jacob’s Ladder and stuff like that.”

Mr. Brown looked at the floor, pinched his eyebrows and then looked up at his pupil. “The point is,” he said, gently holding her elbow to propel her to the door as if he now understood Elsa’s problem and it would soon be solved. “You don’t know now what you’ll want to do when you’re older, and you need to keep all options open. You want to become a teacher? Fine, far be it for me to say ‘no.’ I’m a teacher. It’s an okay life. But later, after college, you may decide something more lucrative is what you want. Don’t hold yourself back. Joining the Science Society will never hurt those lesser dreams, but not joining will almost certainly prevent you from doing the big ones.”

Elsa stopped the forward progress toward the door. “So if someone like May has big dreams we need to ignore them because she’s not showing the proper passion. Too bad later if she gets the proper passion, it’ll be too late then.”

“Elsa, everyone wants to be a pop star, but not everyone can sing on key.”

“I understand,” Elsa said. She nodded her head, and looked up at Mr. Brown and thanked him and then headed toward the door. She so wanted to ask when was the last time a pop singer worried about singing on key, but she didn’t. She was too angry.

Certainly May only wanted to join because she needed it for her resume. That’s the only reason anybody joined. And yes, May’s grades weren’t as good as others, but it was all so hypocritical. Why was it so important that Elsa go where May couldn’t? Wasn’t this just a way to start separating out certain types of people? How could her mother not see this as an example of the undocumented American caste system that Lainie always harped about?