Storm Driven Progress

Chapter 7: Theories Abound

Sergeant Bell hummed a Bach concerto to himself as he bustled about in the kitchen. He wasn't exactly a dab hand in the kitchen, but it made a difference having someone else to cook for. He pulverised half a bread loaf into crumbs and broke an egg into the bowl. He stared at it. Nothing disappeared into nothing. It became something else. He checked the heat in the Aga ovens and chose the top one for his bake.

If something was set on fire, it still existed, just in a different form: carbon ash. If something was broken up, it became smaller, changed pieces of the whole. And what about the people involved? The Overtons were alive. Something had died inside the Wilkinsons and Sorensens.

He grated up orange cheese into the bowl and mixed the lot together. Mixing and mixing and mixing and ...

Gideon entered the kitchen.

"What's up, Unc?"

Sergeant Bell stopped mixing and collected his thoughts.

"Something caused the animals and parts of the ash tree at Sorensens to vanish. There were bits of grass gone there, too. No burns, no ash, no nothing."

"The Overton boys said they were like little bombs, black flashes," said Gideon. "You get sprites, massive energy bursts, but they're supposed to be above the clouds."

"Even something blown up by a bomb is just blown into smaller pieces," said his uncle. He greased the Pyrex casserole dish with butter. "These are vanished."

"We can't see down to a molecular level, so we don't know if they're vanished or just broken down into pieces or molecules."

'Broken down' didn't sound pleasant when you were talking living creatures.

Gideon was warming up. "You've only got three possibilities. Vaporisation, pulverisation or annhilation. Greater force than a volcano."

Vaporisation. Sergeant Bell turned that over in his mind. "What are the differences?"

"If something's vaporised, it hasn't vanished, it's broken down at molecular level."

"So it would be water?" Sergeant Bell heaved the cheesy dough into the dish and patted it down.

"Just molecules, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen ... the base elements that make up whatever the substance was as a whole. Pulverisation would create particles with the same molecular structures as the whole. Annihilation is when something is completely destroyed."

"I thought everything equated to energy, and energy couldn't ever be completely destroyed."

"Energy converts into something and can then be spent. So paper can be converted into heat and light if you burn it, but then that heat and light vanish when the energy from the paper is spent or runs out."

"So if something has created annihilation, you can have no evidence of that? Eye witnesses must be few and far."

"You'd need physical evidence of whatever caused the physical reaction of annihilation. As in a particle that's one half of a chemically or physically reactive compound."

"So if you were there at the time and caught it in a jar, you should find some useful atoms."

"If you could actually catch this in a jar. I'm not sure we've got the right equipment to do something like this."

"So you can't."

"Without knowing if the evidence we could obtain would be even solid, liquid or gas, it's hard to tell."

"So what about the flashes that the Overton boys described?"

Gideon sat down and took a slurp of tea. "There's your problem. A flash suggests a conversion from solid substance to pure energy."

Sergeant Bell let this sink in.

"As in a flash of light."

"As in annihilation."

Sergeant Bell put the cheese bake in the oven and closed the door with a slam.

"So what is actually causing it, the thunderstorm or something else?"

Gideon frowned. "You want me to look for a job or work out the physics?"

"Work out the physics and you'll earn yourself a rent-free month. How's that for an offer?"

Gideon stood up.

"Not now, wait till after your lunch," said Sergeant Bell irritably. He reminded himself of his own mother.

Do you think Sergeant Bell and Gideon are on to something?

Next instalment tomorrow!

Thanks for reading!