THE BISHOP PART 4
Oh, good. The undead wanted knowledge. That’s a no-no where I come from. Too much too soon could ruin a civilization. Tweak a bit, maybe we would do, but that was generally it. Still, I wasn’t dealing with humanity as whole here. I was dealing with…what?… a subset of humanity? A different species entirely? This undead stuff was messing up the rule book something fierce.
Okay, no harm in listening, I thought.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Newton slipped a laptop from under the table. He spent a few seconds keying something in, then turned the screen to face me.
“This,” he replied. “We have not yet been able to complete these equations.”
The laptop’s screen was filled with mathematical formula and symbolism. I scrolled down the page.
And down.
And down.
It was quite involved.
I returned to the top of the page and began to examine the figures more closely. They rang a bell in my head.
“You are familiar with this?” asked Marchell.
“Just a sec,” I stalled.
Then it came to me what all the mumbo jumbo was. I had seen this, expressed slightly differently, in my later school years. In a physics class. Math was never my strong point, which is one reason I’m a xenpsociologist, but I remembered enough o recognize this.
“This is the math behind collapsing matter into an artificial black hole.” I announced with some incredulity.
“This is far beyond what Earth is capable of.”
“The Bishop was delighted I was familiar with the mathematics. “Not entirely true. The daylighters couldn’t do this, no. but we can. As I said, with centuries to work with we have moved far beyond them. But there are errors in the math. We’d solve them in time, be sure of that, but your assistance would save us time. And we could call it the first of many profitable trades.”
“Is this all theoretical? You’d need the power of a fusion generator to effect this kind of result.”
“We have several. Well hidden from the daylighters. They are just planning their first prototype, using technology partially from one of the companies we control. ‘But once formed the power from a controlled black hole would dwarf that of a fusion generator.”
I pondered this for several moments, pretending to study the computer screen, while the vamps looked on. At least they were not close to tapping into the zero point energy field. This was 200 year old technology. Limitless power for a planet. The basis of power for an interstellar drive. One nasty, nasty, planet destroying weapon.
In the hands of the vile and evil undead.
But what the vamp said was true. They would eventually conquer the math. And then the engineering.
I made what monkey boys call an executive decision.
I decided this was a tweak
“Okay, Bishop. You’re on.’ I agreed. “I’ll get this fixed up for you and you help me with the werewolf.”
