The Captain spoke looking puzzled, “This knowledge is big!”
“As the saying goes, ‘Oh, you ‘ain’t seen nothin’ yet’, ‘Miss Lu said. These ‘people’ along with our help have developed a method to not only to send a picture but they have discovered, down on the sub-atomic level, additional data stored on these pictures when they were taken.”
Spook said to Miss Wu, “You lost me there!”
“Thanks, Dr. Kim, I’ve been lost with their technology for a long time. I found out they have broken atoms down to what we always thought was the atoms basic level – the electron, neutron and protons.
The ‘les hommes en argent’ have discovered electrons, neutrons and protons ARE NOT the basic building blocks of atoms they have found that information is stored deeper within atomic particles, the Nano area, as they call it. They have learned how to retrieve this information and manipulate it for their own use.”
Spook mumbles, ‘I’ve got two doctorates and I’m still lost, the Nano what?”
* * * * *
“Okay, I don’t exactly understand what they do or how it is done but in simple English they have tapped into a whole new dimension of particle knowledge science never knew existed.
Someday this will be a whole new field of scientific study.
As I said 'the silver men’ call it Nanotechnology. What I actually do understand, and this is going to blow your socks off…see all those boxes and boxes of photographs along the wall?” The Captain and Spook both nod in agreement.
“They can insert any photograph from any one of those boxes into one of their machines. And, you all have already found, I’m sure, the large power plant outside they use to charge the photo with hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity. This huge electrical charge causing the sub-atomic particles to separate these Nano particles they discovered or already knew about - of course without actually splitting the atom (that would be bad) and it appears on the other end as the original photograph but… but… wwwwith… sssssomething … eeeelse…..”
“What...! What...! Tell us!!!! Both of them said excitedly. They sensed this was something big!
“What else appears on the photographs?”
* * * * *
“Sound…! Sound and movement. They get both sound and movement from photographs!”
“Hold up for a second,” the Captain said as he got up and hurriedly walked out onto the mezzanine. Looking toward the hole at the front door he yelled, “Pop! Pop!” His voice echoed in the large open chamber as he yelled again, “Damn it, POP where are you?” His voice echoing even louder this time..
Sarge sticks his head inside and yells back, “What! What the hell do you want?”
Little ‘S’ said, “Get back up here, quick, Miss Lu has something you need to listen to!”
As Sarge walks back through the hole imitating the front door, he flicks his un-smoked cigarette butt out into the front yard and thinks, ‘I hope this isn’t more atom particle junk, they ought to understand by now I don’t grasp nothin’ about such stuff!’
Sarge walks back into the room, pulls out a chair which makes a terrible screeching noise as the metal legs slides across the floor and then he tries to sit down as quietly as possible.
Miss Lu slightly annoyed continues, “ I said these ‘les hommes en argent’ insert a photograph into one end of these machines and retrieve a copy of the picture on the other end, but when the finished product emerges it is complete with its own movie track!” They are getting the actual words that were being spoken at the time the photographer took the picture!!!!
Now THIS did peek Sarge’s interest, “Words…? Words…? What kind of words?”
“I do not know how to explain the process any plainer, I’ll just have to show you.” With this she got up from the table and moved over to one of the big metal machines - there were four of them. Sarge thought they reminded him of old pinball machines, in a funny kind of way.
* * * * *
She asked them to gather around the machine to observe the demonstration. Once all four had assembled around the device Miss Lu asked Spook if he would be so kind to get her a photograph from one of the boxes. Any box, it does not matter, and any photograph that he chooses would be fine.
Dr. Kim rummaged around in the boxes looking at first one then another picture. He would stare intently at one shake his head and toss it back but after a number of discards he finally settling on the ‘one’, a photograph with a caption which read “President Abraham Lincoln reviewing Antietam battle field with Allen Pinkerton and Major General John A. McClernard, Oct 3,1862”.
He thought if she gets anything from this picture I will be surprised, it’s over a hundred years old!
Walking across the room, not toward Miss Lu, but directly to Little ‘S’, “Take a look at this, what do you think?” said Spook handing the Captain the picture. Spook had already learned, in addition to his scholarly knowledge, Little ‘S’ considered himself quite an amateur historian – the ‘War Between the States’ as he referred to the Civil War, being a favorite of his.
Little ‘S’ grasped the photo, walked over to a good light source, and surveyed the picture quite absorbedly.
Little ‘S’ motioned for Big ‘S’ to come view their find. When the three of them had their heads close together, Little ‘S’, sighing, then and in a hushed voice so that Miss Lu wasn’t able to hear their conversation said, “Well, this picture is the real thing. This is a photograph taken after the Battle of Antietam. “Ahem”, he said, “as we in the South refer to it as the ‘Battle of Sharpsburg’; as I recall, the battle took place in September of ’62 – the man on the left in the derby hat is Alan Pinkerton, he started the Secret Service; of course everyone recognizes Ol’ Abe Lincoln in the middle who had come to survey the battlefield; and the general on the right, I suppose based upon the caption, is General McClernard; however, I’m not too familiar with him.
I have seen this picture many times before - this is quite a famous photograph and the photographer was none other than the distinguished Civil War photographer, Mathew B. Brady; however, let’s not provide Miss Lu with any more information than she needs.” Turning to her he asked, "Miss Lu do you have a pair of scissors?”
“Well, let me think, yes, I think so, Captain. There should be a pair in the work desk behind you,” she said pointing at the desk with her finger. The Captain retrieved the scissors and neatly removed the caption identifying the photograph and he, sighing, handed it to Miss Lu.
“First,” she said, “the photograph must to be processed through the Magnetic Synchronizer or as we call it the Magsync. I’m just a chemist, so I cannot begin to explain the theory behind how it works. I have heard others here say the Magsync manipulates atoms on the molecular level, in this Nano area.
Whatever happens prepares the photograph to allow sounds and images to be extracted. In scientific terms – it just works. The team, to which I am assigned, never worked on the Magnetic Synchronizer. I’m sorry I cannot tell you more about how it performs, whatever it does. All I know is it uses a tremendous amount of energy too.”
She smoothed the photo out, straightens the corners and carefully inserted it, face down, into the adjustable picture size slot at the front of the Magnetic Synchronizer, pushed a quarter-sized button and almost instantly the original emerged from a slot next to the one she just used. The photograph is next inserted into a second slot, face side down again; she flips a switch; pushes a couple of buttons with strange symbols or writings on them; lights on the device started blinking and the machine began to hum.
The three men looked at each other, all were thinking the same thought…. that sound this machine was making was exactly the same humming sound that big white disc thing out by the river makes.
In just a few seconds Miss Lu walked from the head of, what could be called the front, of the device to its rear and presses a switch. This switch had those odd looking symbols on it too.
Imme
diately, upon touching the button, a little drawer about ¼ inch thick and about five inches wide slowly and silently slid out. Lying on the little emerging shelf could be seen a round glistening object resembling a round thin piece of lustrous silver metal.
She reached down and picked up the shiniest circular metal-like disk that any of them had ever seen. Sarge immediately thought of a highly polished metal 45-rpm record, but totally slick. It was lacking grooves and was about half the size of a vinyl record.
Each in turn wanted to feel and touch the beautiful round marvelous object and identify the composition material. Their first thought - metal - no, plastic - no, it must be some type of unknown polymer substance. The little circular disc felt extremely light and when held up in front of their faces their images were as plain as if they were viewing themselves in a mirror.
After removing the little metal-disc from the first machine and letting the men examine it she then used the disc to perform a procedure in another smaller machine by pressing a symboled button and as before a little drawer exactly like the first came silently sliding out.
This time they all moved closer to get a better look at that little drawer. When it slid out and stopped they noticed it had an indented section that was exactly the same diameter as that lustrous disc.
“Miss Lu placed the shiny disc in the groove and again pressed the button again. The tiny drawer reversed its course and disappeared within the machine, and the small door in front closed shut.
This device had what appeared to be a small television screen built into the machine but above the drawer device; however, the screen size was no more than about 10 or 12 inches in size.
Sarge thought, ‘Never did see a TV that small. Guess they haven’t heard about those new 21” jobs.”
But as soon as she had pushed the button an image appeared on this small TV screen. The screen wasn’t a TV, it was showing an image of the photograph… there was Mr. Lincoln, General McClernard and Mr. Pinkerton but…. oh no… it can’t be… this has to be trickery… the three men on the photograph, no it wasn’t just a still photograph anymore, these images were moving. Moving as if they were on a television show, but something else… they…. they were now IN COLOR and TALKING to each other!!!!
* * * * *
In the background, could be heard the words, partially indistinct:“Mr. President I (indistinct word) it would (indistinct words) better if you put your hat back on.”
The President replied, “Dag nab it, Mathew, ever since Mary give me this darn stovepipe hat I always have to have my picture took with it! I hate this dab blasted thing!”
General McClernard laughed and said, “Sir your admiring public has gotten used to that hat."
Mr. Lincoln motioned to Allen Pinkerton, “Git into this here dad burn phottygraph Alan, I need somebody to make me look good.” All three men in the picture laughed. “Git on with it Mat….” At the word ‘Mat’ the ‘moving color photograph’ stopped, ending Miss Lu’s demonstration.
“That’s as long as we have been able to record a ‘photograph’, said Miss Lu, “that’s what we have been working on recently, trying to extend record time.”
At first Sarge, Little ‘S’ and Spook just sat there, they did not look at each other, they were flabbergasted, all they could do was stare at the now blank screen. Then Sarge started laughing, not just a chuckle but a big belly guffaw.
“What is so funny?” Little ‘S’ said quizzically.
“Who would have thought Abe Lincoln sounded like Walter Brenner (TV star of The Real McCoys of the early ‘60s)!” Sarge said still snickering. “I bet if this thing played longer Abe would have been limping too (Walter limped in the TV series)!”
After the laughing session the Captain was the next to speak seriously – “Miss Lu I do not want you to take what I am about to say the wrong way – hell, how else can you take it. Miss Lu, I know you have worked here for a while, and mean well, but somehow or by some ulterior motives these ‘silver’ guys have fooled you all.
This is some kind of illusion – this machine is obviously hooked up to some kind of Hollywood movie making equipment that delivers, I must admit, a frigging, excuse the French Miss Lu, good product. Something like this would surely sell like blazes back in the States.” Laughing, he said, “Walter Brennan did made a good Abe Lincoln ‘tho, I do admit?”
“She responded, “I can see how strange and unbelievable this is. At first it was to me too, but I found out it DOES work. This is REAL!!
What the ‘les hommes en argent’ were trying to do was expand the scope of the photographs with their sound - to push them to talk and move longer than just a few seconds that they now can capture. They believed they had the technology that could expand the movement and speech up into minutes, but we had not gotten that far… yet.
What you just witnessed on this demonstration is the maximum length that we have been able to produce movement and sound, about 30 seconds.
Another ‘captive’ told me they were close to producing sound from written items, such as documents, letters or manuscripts. She was a part of the team working on that. Can you just imagine what doors that would open up? You might get to hear the conversation that took place as the signers of your Declaration of Independence put their pens to that document.
Our instructors, I’m sorry, our captors call those little shiny circular storage devices Disc-Compactors; we just call them Compact Disc or shortened them to CDs.
At the current time the ‘les hommes en argent’ can only put something on a disc one time, it cannot be used over and over. We cannot use it again so we call them just a CD-R, recordable only.
We can put dozens and dozens of pictures on one disc but we are, at the current time, unable to erase the data and record on the same disc again. Our captors refer to them also as ‘Write Once Read Many’. We are working on a disc right now that 'the silver men’ say will be able to be used over and over and they termed it a CD-RW, read and write.”
“Miss Lu there must some trickery here somewhere!!”
“I know this is hard to grasp but Dr. Kim how about you go pick out another photograph and I will show you there is no trickery involved.”
Captain Scarburg spoke up, “I’m tired of calling the Photoelectron Collector the ‘machine’. Thomas Edison invented one of the first moving picture machines; so I think we ought to call this machine the ‘Edison’, and that little sucker, let’s just call it a ‘CD Player.’ Is that all right with everyone?” Everyone nodded in agreement.
CHAPTER THIRTY
DALLAS, TEXAS, 22 NOVEMBER 1963
This time Dr. Kim was going to find something that could not possibly be pre-loaded on film and already be in the Edison. He shuffled through dozens of different photographs and settled on exactly the right one. He pulled it from the box and carried it over and showed it to Sarge and the Captain, they shook their heads in agreement.
Dr. Kim handed it to Miss Lu. She looked at the photograph and back at Dr. Kim and asked, “Do you all know this man?”
Dr. Kim answered, “Yes indeed we do, do you know him?”
“Sorry no, she answered, “is he someone important?”
“Put it in the Edison; and see if it can tell us!”
* * * * *
Miss Lu went through the same routine as she had previously done with the photo of President Abraham Lincoln. She inserted the photo, pushed the button, heard the hum, watched the lights flicker and extracted the “CD”; placed this new version into the little opening and watched it slide back into the machine and punched the ‘play’ button, then they, breathlessly, waited for the event, if any, to unroll on the little TV screen.
They all thought they had Miss Lu this time. She was from Taiwan, there was no way she would know who was on this photograph. They believed whatever she attempted to do nothing was going to happen. This was all some kind of farce, a stunt, a magic trick a…. well they ran out of descriptive ways to try to rationalize what they
saw on the President Lincoln ‘CD’.
Although in their logical minds the three men just ‘knew’ nothing was going to happen. Spook, Little ‘S’ and Big ‘S’ just couldn’t help themselves, they all squeezed in as close as they could to get a better view of the tiny television screen.
A faint glow began to brighten the screen – Dr. Kim realized he wasn’t even breathing and sucked in a lungful of air and slowly exhaled. Scenes on the little television started to appear. Although the images were not really plain yet, they could tell it was a man standing on the outside of a building.
The scene on the screen cleared a little more. They could now vaguely see, what appeared to be, a young man dressed totally in black. He was holding a rifle in his left hand with the butt supported on his hip; in his right hand, close to his chest, and underneath his chin was, what again appeared to be, two newspapers. A pistol could be seen sticking out of his pants on his right hip.
More and more details were beginning to become apparent but Dr. Kim, Sarge and the Captain were not surprised as to what they thought was starting to materialize on the little screen – they knew the photograph was LEE HARVEY OSWALD.
They knew his Russian wife Marina, had taken the photograph, behind their house in Dallas, Texas. They also remembered police officials later would use this very same photograph to establish one of the pieces of concrete evidence proving Lee Harvey Oswald and his Italian Carcano rifle, shown in the photograph, assassinated President John F. Kennedy on Nov 22, 1963!