Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 74 - Dissection

Photo by Alessandra Wolfsberger on Unsplash

“Does anyone have a pacemaker?” Tabitha asked the group assembled around the long, metal work table. They looked at each other questioningly, waiting for someone to volunteer that information.

“No one?” Tabitha continued. “Okay, good. Then you can all stay.”

“So how’s this work, exactly?” Tony asked, poking at the collection of torn-apart equipment tossed into the center of the table.

“It’s quite simple, actually,” James said. “The larger one will take a bit of work to get operational as non-nuclear EMPs are still something of science fiction.”

“That’s what they used in The Matrix,” Tony said.

“That’s what they use in every bloody sci-fi movie,” Frankie responded.

“So that’s what we’re going to do now?” Olivia asked. “Just cobble together an EMP device?”

“A portable one,” Tabitha said. “A safeguard. In case we see another black hole forming in the early stages.”

“So a weapon, then,” Frankie said.

“Sort of,” Tabitha said. “A precautionary defense.”

“In case someone else makes an unexpected phone call,” James said, looking at Olivia. She glared right back at him until he turned away.

“Then, as James said,” Tabitha continued, “we’ll look to getting the larger one working and hopefully bring an end to all of these larger things showing up before they swallow us completely.”

“So, what exactly are we dealing with here?” Tony asked.

“These disposable cameras were just starting to be distributed by Fuji in 1986, but mostly in Japan,” James told them as he wedged a screwdriver into the beveled side of the plastic camera. “Kodak started selling them in the States a year later — a year from now, I guess — in 1987. But because of the confidential nature of our work, and because we did quite a bit of international travel to broker deals for equipment, disposable cameras seemed a worthwhile investment to document our work.”

“We bought them by the caseload,” Tabitha said.

James worked the flathead back and forth inside the small, plastic device’s beveled groove. Finally finding an entry point, he gave the screwdriver one last cautious twist and popped the camera apart, exposing a series of precariously installed components.

Carefully, he extracted the black central casing, which also housed a roll of film, a plastic spool, and a generic brand AA battery with the word “ALKALINE” written in futuristic silver letters on the side. James then turned the camera housing sideways, and about a half dozen other plastic pieces fell onto the table’s surface - a miniature blue spindle, a white dial with tiny black numbers embossed on the edges, and a clear plastic lens in its frame.

“So what do you do with these?” Tony asked. He’d pulled his pencil and small notepad from his back pocket, poised to write notes.

“What did I just say?” James blustered.

“What?”

“Confidential!”

“What?” Tony asked again.

“Are you going to report on this?” James asked. “I just said we got disposable cameras because of our confidential work here.”

“I’m just taking notes,” Tony answered.

“Confidential!” James bellowed again, his cheeks red, and Tony slipped the notepad and pencil back into his pocket.

“I didn’t figure it mattered now, is all,” Tony mumbled.

“If what we plan to do today doesn’t work, I don’t particularly want to give the world any additional reason to eventually blame me,” James said, taking a deep breath and calming himself. “No reporting on this. Confidential, you hear?”

“I thought it was his wife’s fault,” Tony said, pointing a finger at Frankie.

“You’re not answering my question,” James said, color seeping into his cheeks again. “And I’m wondering if we must ask you to leave.”

“Hey, you brought me here,” Tony said, his bushy mustache wiggling with irritation. “I hear you. No reporting.”

James stared at him a moment longer, cleared his throat loudly, and then set back to examine the last remaining piece within the disposable camera’s frame: a small circuit board — barely an inch and a half across — with a squiggly pattern of light and dark green circuits that ended at soldered connection points connected to a large black plastic button that acted as the camera’s original shutter button, which protruded from the top right corner.

James selected a thin, tiny-pointed screwdriver from a case resting on the table and delicately began to dismount the circuit board from the camera.

Without exchanging a word with each other, Tabitha picked up a length of thick insulated copper wire also lying on the table and began to tightly wrap it around an iron rod that she’d extracted from one of the many towering cabinets that lined the workroom’s walls.

Once James extracted the circuit board, he set it gently on the table. Then, tentatively holding the plastic handle of the screwdriver, he touched it to the base of the capacitor, which emitted a tiny shock that made everyone but James and Tabitha jump backward.

“Whoa!” Frankie said. “Thanks for the warning there, boss.”

“I had to ground it,” Tabitha explained. “Discharge the energy to prevent electric shock later.”

The two astrophysicists shared a smile between them briefly before immediately slipping back into their default serious mode.

“Hands off,” James instructed the group as he turned his back to them and started rummaging through the cabinets once again. A moment later, he returned with a soldering iron and a spool of solder.

Wordlessly, Tabitha handed James the iron rod, which was now wrapped in copper wire with a stripped and exposed sliver of copper wire still sticking out on both ends. Taking the rod, James effortlessly soldered it to the camera’s capacitor, like a surgeon who’d performed the same appendectomy a thousand times.

“What are you doing now?” Tony asked as James set about his silent work.

“I’m adding to the terminals of the capacitor there,” he said matter-of-factly as if everyone at the table even knew what a capacitor was. With the soldering iron, he pointed at the metallic area on the circuit board that had just let off the spark. “I’ll solder on the switch from the camera, along with those wires there — the coil and such. Attaching that coiled rod will do the other magic. The switch will keep me from getting shocked.”

“Isn’t that why you just did that discharge thing?” Tony asked.

James looked up from the soldering iron long enough to silence the news producer again.

“Alright,” James said, standing upright as he rested the hot soldering iron on the metal table. He snapped the alkaline battery back into place on the circuit board. “That’s it.”

“What’s it, exactly?” Frankie asked, looking at the circuit board now welded to the iron rod wrapped in copper wire.

“That’s our portable EMP,” Tabitha said.