Canticle Blue

27. Middi

Music - Angelico by Bill Douglas
(from Hearts of Space: Universe 1)

Except in warm-weather months, island seminars and some classes were held in the south portion of the Great Room. Even with rows of planter boxes along the room perimeter, there was more than enough space. Over a hundred of the islanders showed up for Annibet's talk. It would also be archived in "Deep Core" data storage areas, as they were called, for public access by "C-link" data access later. The name of her talk was, "Exotic Material Applications." As she walked to the podium, the waterfall was turned off. She had spoken in seminars many times and needed no introduction.

"Thank you all for turning out. I've got a lot of ground to cover, but I don't think it will take too long. Hopefully what is described here will raise questions which can be addressed in future seminars. And, at the end of my talk, I'll have a surprise for you.

"As is well-known now, from the first day our expedition arrived on this island, we were confronted by things we didn't understand. In our youthful enthusiasm then—and hopefully we still have it—we tried to make use of what we found anyway. The Per'sa had made a sustainable home here, and we hoped to get the chance to do the same.

"From the beginning we wondered if we were dealing with a new kind of matter, and that turned out to be true. As a rule, what we found did not bond chemically with normal matter and only bonded with itself under certain conditions. We felt that it probably occurred everywhere because, if it was related to the dark matter described in cosmology, its gravitational effects in the observed universe were well known. But we would not have thought to search for it locally unless a way of collecting it was found. And that is what the Per'sa originally learned to do.

"They found that particles of a certain kind of exotic matter would naturally lodge—somewhat like impurities—in the silica parts of one specie of phytoplankton. The interstices, or spaces between atoms in the crystals, were somehow the optimal size and shape for them. When trapped in adjacent spaces, those particles would interact with one other to produce the Canticle-Blue effects we are familiar with. The Per'sa learned to culture this phytoplankton, but they also discovered, by experimentation, previously unknown allotropes (or crystal shapes) and were able to use them to capture other kinds of exotic matter. This led to their development of Shil, N-type, and R-type materials. These were the four original kinds of 'E-matter,' as we call it now, that we encountered here. I say original' because we have seen hints of others. The properties of all of these are described extensively in the Deep Core and can be accessed publicly.

"There are passive and dynamic types of E-matter. The dynamic kinds, R-type and Canticle Blue, are thought to be able to focus the effects of what we believe is dark energy—the expansive force in the universe—producing movement and light. Cian Dhalen's lectures on this area of cosmology are available through the C-link.

"In recent years, we have been blessed with brilliant materials-science and computer-science staffs. I will now try to describe a few of their many achievements, their ways of applying them, and what we hope to do in the future.

"First, we have made great progress in producing refined lattices to collect E-matter. This has resulted in purer samples and enhanced effects. For example, the light produced by Canticle-Blue lattices is much more intense, and the lattices are thin and flexible enough to fit into almost any lighting application. The amplified lifting characteristics in new R-type lattices are so radical that they can be almost comically difficult to work with, as you might imagine. The new Shil lattices simply have to be seen to be believed.

"The second area of very promising research has to do with E-matter collection and storage. If we are to commit to future dependence on these kinds of matter, it will be necessary to collect the amounts we need. To this end our materials science staff has created tunable lattices. They can be configured to collect specific kinds of E-matter and then de-tuned in vacuum storage chambers to release it. Using these lattices we've already been able to store large quantities of all four original types and may soon be able to collect the rarer kinds. And—if you'll allow me to momentarily get way ahead of myself—we are already looking into the possibility of collecting much purer samples of E-matter using spacecraft which will periodically return to the island to offload their cargoes."