An age ago, I ran across a nifty scientific like bit of ness called a Bose-Einstein condensate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate
Since that's the sort of thing I enjoy, I wrote a story that used it, called "Cold Start" which earned me my very first rejection notice. It's on my website "brotherbrad.net", if you want to read it.

When I wrote that I had not yet heard of a strange effect that has only recently been discovered, called a bosenova.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosenova

Unfortunately, there are a couple of jokes I couldn't refrain from including in this story that relate to these things. I really should avoid including puns that require reading from my readers before they read what I've written.

Here's a short article that includes everything you need to know to get my weakly interacting humor:

http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/bosenova.htm

And now, without either moo or further ado, I (proudly?) present...


The Overlord's Dilemma: part II.
By Bradley J. Barton, who here by apologizes in advance.

The sun hung high in the sky, shining down upon the deserted white sandy beach. Gentle waves lapped languidly at the shore, their soft susurrations the only sound in the still air; until the measured tramp of the multi-ton battle droid shattered the stillness. The gigantic mechanized monstrosity tore through the woods with contemptuous ease, snapping trees, some of which were hundreds of years old, like they were so many twigs. The battle droid stepped on the expanse of sand, crouched on the highest dune, and with a mighty leap, arched majestically through the air. While still in mid leap, the robot began shifting and folding, like some sort of deranged origami, taking on the form of a massive seagoing war vessel, every line of which cried out its ability to dominate the high seas. The transformation complete, the ship continued arching through the air, until the knife edged prow slammed into the water, causing twin sheets of spray to fly high into the air as with a mighty crash, the bow came to rest in the nearly six inches of water, the stern landing on completely dry sand a moment later.

A short time passed in relative quiet. Then there was a horrible tortured squealing of metal bending beyond any hope of proper function. The great ship seemed to twitch slightly before growing silent once more. A cynical observer might have concluded that the ship had tried, tried and failed, to reassume the form of the battle droid, but there was no one there to make such an impudent suggestion, just the ship, canted embarrassingly to starboard. Yet even if one assumed that the conveyance was trapped in the unwieldy form of a beached vessel, the overlord was far from defeated. There was a shrill whistle as the battle ship called upon the forces of darkness for aid.

All along the shoreline, just beneath the surface of the water, there was a great turning, as of titanic forces unleashed. The water swirled and boiled with furious activity, until, at last, rank upon rank of robotic lobsters began to pour forth from the water, their metallic carapaces glinting in the sunlight, their tiny synthetic voices raised in a reedy chorus of martial vigor. In the front of each of the dozens of columns, the largest of the computerized crustaceans, immense grizzled specimens of nearly three pounds a piece, called out the cadence.

"Your left, your right, your back-left your middle-right, your back-right your middle-left, right, left! Hold those tails up, swing those claws!"

Gathering around their master's ship, they reached out with their claws to gain purchase, with little regard for either the paint or the laws of physics. If a robot lobster could take a deep breath to prepare itself, there may have been a collective sigh, for though they were strong in their numbers, they were not of great strength individually, and this was a mighty task that was set before them. Yet deep within their hardwired hearts they took courage, and with a one, two, three, four, five, heave! They all pushed together. Amazingly, incredibly, the unyielding mass of the battle ship shifted, scraping across three grains of sand before hanging up on a particularly large one. Undaunted, the clawed cohort heaved again, and again, and again.

Once the efforts of the robotic horde, or the incoming tide, had freed the ship from the shore's sandy embrace, the juggernaut was able to show her true glory. Powerful hydraulic jets pushed her forward at a speed no ship of the petty squabbling "nations" of the puling masses could approach. With such a turn of speed, it was not long before the ship reached its destination, and came to a full stop. A distance from the vessel, the water seemed to hump upwards, as the rounded top of a gigantic geodesic dome rose slowly from the depths, sheets of water flowing off the transparent triangular panels of which its exterior was constructed. Doors opened on the dome's side, and the vessel of stealthy destruction floated sedately into the interior berth of the citadel of terror. The doors swung shut and the dome sank slowly back beneath the surface.

The two overlords paused in their discussion long enough to watch the waters crawling up around the dome's exterior.

"That is a nice affect." d breathed in genuine admiration.

J nodded, "Yeah. I still haven’t gotten tired of it myself. Well, we'd best go check up on my quantum computing department; if I don't observe them constantly, their progress tends to be somewhat uncertain."

The overlords strolled unhurriedly through the corridors of the citadel of terror, chatting amiably about one thing and another. Eventually the talk turned towards d's latest setback.

"All I'm saying," j said in a placating tone as they stepped into his throneroom, "is that there isn't any explosive that doesn't share the same drawback. There's no way to test a bomb, other than by setting it off. The best you can hope for is to nail down whatever problems you're having with the manufacture, until you can be reasonably certain that you won't have enough duds in your reactive armor to destroy your weapon."

D sighed disconsolately, "Perhaps you're right, but it's going to play merry hell with my timetable. I'm supposed to be able to get to work on the amphibian prosthetics program next; all that stuff about the snails was just a ruse to throw the French off the scent."

J shook his head tolerantly as he sat in his throne, "Speaking as one overlord to another, I must say that you are really too rigid with your plans. If one thing goes wrong, it often provides unlooked for opportunities. Take this headquarters of mine for example. When it was first completed, we had a little bit of trouble with the plumbing. As you might imagine, it can be difficult to dump wastes into water that is at a pressure of several tons per square inch. For a while, every time one of my staff used the little henchman's room, the toilets would have something of a back flow. Well, more of a geyser really. In fact there were many deaths."

"How is that supposed to provide an opportunity?" d asked as he sat in an ornate chair, feeling slightly put out by how it was set lower than his host's seat.

"I'm coming to that. You see, at the time, the next stage in my intricate plan was to turn the Mediterranean into a large salty bowl of beef soup. Never mind exactly how that fit into the overall program. We started with one-million cows, but were having trouble figuring out how to dry and compress them into the mega beef Boolean cube I'd be needing. Fortunately, we discovered that by using ultra-low temperatures and some special hormones, the mass of cattle could spontaneously compress itself into a Bove-Einstein condensate."

"What exactly is that?" d asked.

"Well, if you can overcome the cows' natural repulsion, get them to be attracted to one another, they will compress themselves into a super dense form of matter. Since the Mediterranean's temperature is quite warm, it would reverse the process quite naturally. If you've ever had the misfortune to smell a warm and wet cow, you'll understand how the attraction is nullified. I figured to use that instead of the Boolean cube, and move forward from there.

The project was moving right along, but then one day, one of my henchmen was microwaving a bean burrito. The magnetic field interacted with the condensate, and there was a bovinnova." j lent back in his chair, resting his hands on the ornately carven arms of the throne while he gazed upwards, a reminiscent smile playing across his face, "There were many deaths.

The explosive phase of the reaction left us with around four-million hooves, 187500 tons of highly radioactive hamburger, approximately the same weightt of beef jerky, and a 375000 ton microscopic black hole, whose hawking radiation emits a pleasant flame broiled aroma.

As you are no doubt aware, the only way to stabilize such an object, which we named Bessie, is to feed it enough material so that it can remain stable. I solved two problems with one hole; all the waste my citadel of terror produces is now dumped into Bessie, solving my plumbing problem, and providing the material needed to stabilize what can easily be incorporated into a handy-dandy doomsday weapon."

"I see the principle," d said slowly, "but that doesn't really solve my current dilemma. It's rather frustrating; my labs could easily produce enough light activated explosive to prepare another weapon in around two hours. If it weren't for the fact that we cannot tell which little bomblets are clear and therefore duds, and which ones are dark and therefore live, I could exact my terrible vengeance upon those smarmy French within this very day!"

"Pardon me?" the white-coated head of j's quantum computing department said diffidently as he entered the throneroom, "Did you say that you have light activated bombs that you need to test?"

D turned half round to look over the newcomer, "That is correct." He answered.

"And the duds are transparent while the live, ah, you called them bomblets, these live light activated bomblets are dark, they would block light?"

D nodded.

The head of j's quantum computing department smiled the smile of a man who knows he can distract his overlord from his department's indeterminate progress, "Well then, great masters, I believe I can solve your problem."

J gestured magnanimously for his department head to continue.

"As your greatness knows, quantum particles have a property where by they interfere with one another. To use the classic example of the double slit, particles sent through two slits, despite being sent through one at a time, will interfere with one another. They can be pictured as waves, and when these waves match up, peak to peak and trough to trough, they reinforce, where as when the peaks and troughs coincide, they interfere destructively. This means that any single particle, in this case, photons, will go through one or another of the slits and land somewhere on the screen, but will avoid those areas that correspond to destructive interference."

D smiled to himself, "Nice phrase that," he murmured, "destructive interference."

"It is possible to arrange a device that has two possible paths for a given particle to follow. Two detectors can be placed so that one of them is in an area that corresponds to constructive interference, while the other is in the dark zone of destructive interference. Thusly, so long as the two paths are open, the light will always be registered at the one detector, which we can call D1, while never arriving at D2. If one of the paths are blocked, about half the time, a photon will hit the blocking object, causing it to explode if it is a live bomb; but now and again, the photon takes the second path and arrives at D2. When it does so, the presence of a light blocking object can be inferred without the light having ever touched the dark object."

"Hot damn!" d said, leaping from his chair.

"Indeed," j said, somewhat more calmly, "It sounds as though we may have a solution to your problem. Well done henchman."

The head of j's quantum computing department bowed modestly, "That is the principle, your Excellency, but the actual application may take some experimentation. In particular, the dud bombs may interfere with the phase. There are also some tricks I would wish to implement that may increase the efficiency of the device. If your dark and glorious self will permit me to, ah, visit the little henchman's room, I can get to work directly."

At j's nod of permission, the head of his quantum computing department gave another bow and turned away. He stepped around the potted ferns and went through a small, tastefully discreet doorway.

"Well then," j said, "It would seem that you'll have your projects nearly back on schedule within the very near future. I will, of course, be quite pleased to lend you the talents of my quantum computing department; though I must insist that you avoid placing any of them in lava."

D waved off such concerns, "I wouldn't dream of it. At worst, I'll only apply your own methods of maintaining discipline. You'll have to let me know what your methods are, of course."

"Well," j said, raising his voice to be heard over the strange roar coming from the other side of the tastefully discreet doorway, ignoring the muffled scream of terror, "I must admit that I have no set form of punishment and reward. I find it helps to keep my staff on their toes."

"Well!" d answered, trying to keep his tone polite as possible while shouting over the increasing noise, "If you're not too busy with your own projects, maybe you could join me at the fortress of doom! After all, it's only right that you share in my moment of triumph!"

"I wouldn't dream of taking any of your credit! I'll be glad to help and observe, but after all..."

The citadel of terror gave a deep groaning sound, the tastefully discreet doorway was yanked off its hinges, and the floor of the throneroom seemed to tilt toward the little henchman's room.

"I don't mean to be an alarmist!" d screamed over a sound like all the cows ever slaughtered throughout history mooing in wrath, "but I can't help thinking that this isn't completely normal!"

J stood from his throne, "I think!" he cried, "that we’d best retire to the escape capsule of save my ass!"

Some time later, in orbit high above the doomed earth, d floated before a vision screen, lethargically switching from one channel to another. He let out a heavy sigh; not even the sight of all the volcanoes on the planet erupting simultaneously was able to cheer him from his dark mood. The hatch opened, and j floated in, wearing a huge, pleased smile.

"Why so glum, my good man?" j asked.

D shook his head in disbelief, "What do you mean?" he asked, waving at the earth, "It's all gone: all my plans, all my secret bases, everything!"

J clapped his friend on the shoulder, causing him to spin slowly end over end, "Come now, I would think you would have called the French by now."

D stopped his spin and stared incredulously at his friend.

"That's where I've been," j was saying, "calling every last one of my enemies, from the United Nations all the way down to that asshole in the third grade, letting them know who caused the destruction of their precious little planet."

"But, but..." d stammered, "That was an accident!"

J nodded, "True, but they don't know that. Do they? You really must learn to make a virtue of necessity."

A rather nasty smile of pure delight spread slowly across d's countenance.

"You know," he said slowly, savoring each syllable, "I think I need to make a few calls."

End



Lest I be accused of making up quantum magic, here's an article on interaction free measurement:

http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw101.html

And for the chronically curious, here's an article that includes details of the Mach-Zehnder Interferometer.

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/MachZehnder/MachZehnder.html

Done and done and done!