code.
They exchanged sidelong glances. CJ was the first to look away.
Her tight-fitting latex gloves were making her hands sweat. She and Roman had been working for hours, both absorbed by the riddle. Sheâd been analyzing the sample with a technique called FAIMSâfield asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry. But now her test was growing tedious. The electrode probe rested in a small beaker of the pearly colloidal fluid, and as it scanned for ions, the screen painted repetitious, hypnotic line graphs. Her eyelids grew heavy. She toyed with the rack of tubes at her elbow. Some of them had frosted.
Curious, she bent closer. When she took one of the vials in her hand, like magic, the frost reverted to liquid. Had she dreamed the frost? No. Two other vials still glimmered with a white coating. She rested her cheek on the countertop to view the tubes close up. Fanciful arabesques of ice painted the glass with fractal fans and pinwheels, reminding her of winter mornings in Vermont, waking up in her drafty boarding school dorm to find Jack Frost ornamenting her windowpanes. Her breath fogged the glass tubes and turned white.
âCome see this,â she called to Roman. But when she looked again, all the frost had melted.
âWhat?â he asked.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. âSorry, thought I saw something. My mistake.â
With a slight frown, he returned to his own experiment.
The lab had no external windows, no way to judge time, and CJ had forgotten her watch. Yet she could tell from the way her mouth watered for cheese pizza that the day was far advanced. Overhead, raindrops pelted the metal roof of Building No. 2.
She rubbed her itching nose and watched Roman scribble.It was strange, she thought, how quickly lifelines could change course. Yesterday, she was shoveling toxic muck into barrels. Today, she was rubbing elbows with a sexy CEO in a state-of-the-art chemical lab. But she had no intention of helping him profit from her compound. Whatever this substance was, it emerged spontaneously. It didnât belong to anyone.
She picked up a test tube and shook it till it foamed. Something in this colloidal fluid could freeze-clean water. She marveled at a process no human mind had conceived. A miracle of natureâif you counted the public waste stream as part of nature. By rights, the compoundâs formula should be treated as open-source shareware, freely available for the common good. Thatâs why sheâd accepted this jobâto make sure that happened.
Well, among other reasons. CJâs reasons were always a little mixed. Of course, she wanted Max to keep his job. Plus she needed access to Quimicronâs lab. Maybe also, at some unacknowledged level, she wanted to spend a little more time with Roman Sacony.
But her main reason, her top number one objective, was to decipher the pond fluid. Simple curiosityâshe wanted to know what it was. As she studied the foaming tube, she could almost hear the tiny bubbles hiss and chatter in a secret language. Once she deciphered the formula, she would publish her findings on the Web, and then Harry wouldnât be the only famous chemist in the family.
The problem was, she and Roman had already run the obvious tests, and the results bewildered them. The sample did not generate an EM field or flicker with light. It didnât form a ball that rolled around in her hand. Except for the frost, which she may have imagined, and the foam, which quickly melted, the liquid just sat there at room temperature, clouded and obscure, giving off a faint methane stink as it slowly mixed and stirred with random molecular motion.
Physically, it could be defined as an emulsified âcolloid,â a fluid in which billions of microscopic particleswere dispersed in continuous phase, like star systems in space. Every cubic centimeter held a living zooâphytoplanktons, diatoms, bacteria, nematodes, amoebas, mold, various types of
They exchanged sidelong glances. CJ was the first to look away.
Her tight-fitting latex gloves were making her hands sweat. She and Roman had been working for hours, both absorbed by the riddle. Sheâd been analyzing the sample with a technique called FAIMSâfield asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry. But now her test was growing tedious. The electrode probe rested in a small beaker of the pearly colloidal fluid, and as it scanned for ions, the screen painted repetitious, hypnotic line graphs. Her eyelids grew heavy. She toyed with the rack of tubes at her elbow. Some of them had frosted.
Curious, she bent closer. When she took one of the vials in her hand, like magic, the frost reverted to liquid. Had she dreamed the frost? No. Two other vials still glimmered with a white coating. She rested her cheek on the countertop to view the tubes close up. Fanciful arabesques of ice painted the glass with fractal fans and pinwheels, reminding her of winter mornings in Vermont, waking up in her drafty boarding school dorm to find Jack Frost ornamenting her windowpanes. Her breath fogged the glass tubes and turned white.
âCome see this,â she called to Roman. But when she looked again, all the frost had melted.
âWhat?â he asked.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. âSorry, thought I saw something. My mistake.â
With a slight frown, he returned to his own experiment.
The lab had no external windows, no way to judge time, and CJ had forgotten her watch. Yet she could tell from the way her mouth watered for cheese pizza that the day was far advanced. Overhead, raindrops pelted the metal roof of Building No. 2.
She rubbed her itching nose and watched Roman scribble.It was strange, she thought, how quickly lifelines could change course. Yesterday, she was shoveling toxic muck into barrels. Today, she was rubbing elbows with a sexy CEO in a state-of-the-art chemical lab. But she had no intention of helping him profit from her compound. Whatever this substance was, it emerged spontaneously. It didnât belong to anyone.
She picked up a test tube and shook it till it foamed. Something in this colloidal fluid could freeze-clean water. She marveled at a process no human mind had conceived. A miracle of natureâif you counted the public waste stream as part of nature. By rights, the compoundâs formula should be treated as open-source shareware, freely available for the common good. Thatâs why sheâd accepted this jobâto make sure that happened.
Well, among other reasons. CJâs reasons were always a little mixed. Of course, she wanted Max to keep his job. Plus she needed access to Quimicronâs lab. Maybe also, at some unacknowledged level, she wanted to spend a little more time with Roman Sacony.
But her main reason, her top number one objective, was to decipher the pond fluid. Simple curiosityâshe wanted to know what it was. As she studied the foaming tube, she could almost hear the tiny bubbles hiss and chatter in a secret language. Once she deciphered the formula, she would publish her findings on the Web, and then Harry wouldnât be the only famous chemist in the family.
The problem was, she and Roman had already run the obvious tests, and the results bewildered them. The sample did not generate an EM field or flicker with light. It didnât form a ball that rolled around in her hand. Except for the frost, which she may have imagined, and the foam, which quickly melted, the liquid just sat there at room temperature, clouded and obscure, giving off a faint methane stink as it slowly mixed and stirred with random molecular motion.
Physically, it could be defined as an emulsified âcolloid,â a fluid in which billions of microscopic particleswere dispersed in continuous phase, like star systems in space. Every cubic centimeter held a living zooâphytoplanktons, diatoms, bacteria, nematodes, amoebas, mold, various types of
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