Chapter 10
Carl looks around the laboratory. Everything is a mess and right where he left it. He has been out of a traditional job since he graduated from college with several engineering degrees in various fields. A pile of miscellaneous parts occupies one of the large tables on the side of the room. A large workbench holds upon it a device resembling a metal, rectangular box. It is a dull gray, and has numerous wires and cables sprouting from one panel and a screen on another panel. On the top panel there is a keyboard mounted into the casing of the box.
Carl digs through one of the other piles of things and tools lying on the ground, and finds a soldering iron. He really needs to finish up his latest project. He has been putting it off for quite some time, getting distracted with other miscellaneous projects, job hunting, and of course the latest peanut allergic reaction.
What will this new device do? Carl can explain, but no one understands. He has tried explaining before, and the responses he gets are the typical “deer in the headlights reaction.” Very few people are familiar enough with tachyon pulses and waves to have the slightest idea as to what the machine would actually do. However, it will make things easier, and be a rather useful device, doing whatever it is suppose to do. Carl hopes to be able to market it, and make huge piles of cash with it, but he has been doubting the feasibility of actually mass producing the device. Another important consideration of the device has been the question were people ready for a device like this? It will utterly revolutionize its field, and everyone will want one. The problem is that Carl does not know if everyone is ready for one. He decides to answer that question after he finishes the device. He figures that way he is giving more time to people to get ready for this device, so that he can market it and make a lot of money in the process.
At last Carl finds the tool he is looking for. Then he realizes that he really should be wearing eye protection while he is using tools. It is just good habit. That way he will help to ensure that he shall be able to see what he is doing with the tool in case a shard of glass or shrapnel flew off of what he is working on and at his face. Not to mention the unknown side effects of the tool he is using. It is a rather new invention by a colleague of his, and not all of the side effects have been discovered and worked out yet. Although he is fairly certain that no holes in the space-time continuum shall be torn. This is possible, but unlikely, since he is operating the drilling device at less than 1 gigawatt.