"Go on, pick it up."
Anatoly picked up the terminus, and opened it. It's smooth, dark, carbon fiber casing sat comfortably in one hand. It had a nice weight to it, comfortable to hold, but not too light. A hundred small blue lights lit up in sequence forming a ring that glowed in the center of the opened terminus. It made no sounds, but Anatoly could feel it purring gently in the palm of his hand.
"So, what do I do?" Anatoly asked.
Gregor handed him a small lump of graphite. "Put it in the terminus."
Anatoly went to place the graphite into the terminus, but felt some resistance, he let go and the piece of graphite hung, suspended in the air a couple of inches above the ring of lights in the terminus, tumbling through over on the spot as if in slow motion. The lights in the terminus pulsed in a slow rhythm.
Anatoly glanced at Gregor, unsure of what to do, or even what he was trying to do.
"Make a diamond."
"What?"
"Make a diamond."
"Ummm."
"Remember, the terminus is an atom reformer. The only difference between graphite and a diamond is the configuration of the atoms. Don't you remember your chemistry class?."
"I was too busy hacking on my computer."
Gregor sighed. "I bet you thought you were so great, creating software out of nothing back then, huh? Now you can create anything.
"Graphite has a planar structure. It's formed of sheets made up of hexagonal carbon rings, but each sheet is only weakly held to the sheet above and below it. That's why it's so soft, it's structurally very week. But! Take those same carbon atoms, and rearrange them, usually under high pressure, and you get a much more structured crystal structure where every carbon atom is strongly connected to every other atom in the structure, making diamond hardest naturally occurring substance on earth."
"You're telling me this thing can turn graphite into diamond? Right here, right now?"
"That's what I am telling you Anatoly."
"So... What do I do?"
"You kinda just have to learn to feel it."
"Riiiight. Magic huh?"
"No, not magic. It's just the next step in the evolution. Remember when you first started writing code, and you had to think through every key press, because you didn't know how to work a keyboard, nor did you know how to write software."
Anatoly nodded, "sure..."
"But then you got better at typing and thinking, and you started to get better at writing software. You got closer to thinking about what you wanted to happen, and your fingers kinda just made it happen. But they were still restricted. You couldn't just think things into existence."
"..."
"And then you got those wrist sensors, then you could just tap things into existence. And then you replaced the wrist sensors with implants that detected muscle activity, so you could 'type' without really moving your fingers. And then you really felt like you were just thinking software into existence."
"Yeah, I guess I follow you."
"But you were still held back from ultimate creation, right? First you still had to think in terms of code, you couldn't just think about the software you wanted to create you had to translate from what you wanted, into code, and then your fingers made it happen magically. And second, you were writing software, which as we now all know is a total waste of time. The terminus let's you create real things, and you don't have to think in code. You think about what you want to happen, learn how to move the muscles in your hands in exactly the right way, and eventually you'll be able to create anything, from raw atoms."
Anatoly raised an eyebrow.
Gregor plucked the terminus from Anatoly's hand and rested it in his own, the graphite came with it, perfectly suspended. Gregor put one hand above the diamond, and twitched the fingers in both hands subtly. The graphite slowly disintegrated into an almost completely transparent cloud suspended above the terminus. The cloud began to reform, over the course of a few minutes the cloud formed into a perfect diamond, reflecting the light from the terminus around the room as it hung in the air. It was much smaller than the graphite. Apparently the denser crystal formation of diamond meant it took up less space than the same number of atoms formed as graphite.
Anatoly just stared.
Gregor disintegrated the diamond back into a cloud, and formed a perfect cube of graphite. Forming the graphite seemed to be a lot faster than forming the diamond had been. Anatoly suspected that denser forms were harder for the temrinus to create than looser ones.
Gregor handed the terminus back to Anatoly. "Your turn".
Anatoly placed one hand above the terminus. The carbon cube continued to gently spin in the terminus's suspense, but otherwise did nothing.
"As I said, you just have to learn to feel it". And with that, Gregor stood up, gave Anatoly a wink, and walked out the door. Just before it closed he popped his head back through: "here, you'll need these." He threw a handful of carbon cubes on the ground next to where Anatoly was sitting. The door closed.
Anatoly tried to get over his disbelief at the whole thing, and thought hard about the cube becoming a cloud of atoms. Again, nothing happened. Anatoly persisted.
After about an hour he was able to spin the cube in the terminus' field by thinking about it hard and moving his fingers slightly, but he couldn't change it's shape at all.
His hands and forearms were starting to hurt. He reluctantly put the terminus down, cracked his knuckles and stood up. Letting out a sigh and shaking his head he went to the kitchen and pulled a beer from the fridge. He slowly drank the cold beer, keeping his eye on the terminus which lay on the floor, still happily suspending the carbon cube.
Anatoly had just about finished his beer when he had an idea. He sat down next to the terminus and picked it up, retrieved the cube from the terminus' field, and poured the last few drops of his beer into the terminus. They hung in the air circling, the center of the terminus. Like droplets on a window, the larger drops absorbed the smaller ones as they bumped into them in the air above the terminus until there was a single slowly rippling ball of beer hanging in the air. A childlike grin spread across Anatoly's face. He prodded the ball with his finger, and for the first time in his life saw what a ripple looked like in three dimensions.
After playing with the beer drop for a few minutes, he picked up the terminus again and resumed his training. He thought hard about pulling the atoms in the liquid apart. After a few minutes he found he could very slightly expand the bubble, teasing at the molecular bonds holding the bubble's surface together, stretching them slightly. He persisted. All of a sudden the ball exploded, spraying a foam of beer in all directions, as if a tiny can of beer had been shaken and opened.
"Well, that's progress I guess."
2am? Already? Have I really been here that long? He shook the terminus dry, closed it, and felt it's gentle hum fade away as it turned itself off. He lay down on the floor and stretched, moments later he was asleep.
His overworked brain immediately kicked into dreaming about the terminus. He dreamt of practicing with it for hours, reshaping the carbon cubes into clouds, nanotubes, bucky-balls and diamonds. Over and over.
He stirred just after 5am, desperate for a piss. The last hour of his sleep had been fitful, dreamful sleep. Relieved, he decided that tonight, sleep would be no more restful than life.
He reopened the terminus.
By day-break he had finally managed to create a cloud of carbon. It took a lot longer, and required more visible effort than Gregor had seemed to use, but he had a cloud. He tried to control the cloud, to form it into some other carbon form, but he couldn't get a grip on it. The ethereal mass swirled and tumbled in the glowing light of the terminus, but he couldn't control it. Frustrated, he lost his concentration, and with that the cloud disappeared completely, the carbon atoms dispersing into the air, increasing the entropy in the room slightly.
Anatoly picked up another of the carbon cubes, and more quickly this time managed to form a carbon cloud. He learnt to control the cloud, but he couldn't form it into anything. He could compress the cloud, into a dark and dense ball, but - when he relaxed the cloud just expanded again. Perhaps it was time to study.
He flipped the terminus closed in a cloud of carbon, and grabbed his glasses, and jacked in. He learnt everything he could about diamond and it's structure.
He learned how natural diamonds formed in the intense heat and pressure deep in the earth mantle over millions of years. He learned about synthesized diamonds, formed in a 1500°C furnace between two anvils at 50,000 times atmospheric pressure. He analyzed the crystal structure, and understood how the structure and chemical bonding of carbon atoms combined to make such a hard structure.
Anatoly awoke to a three dimensional graphic of diamond's structure spinning in front of his face. He groggily flipped the glasses of his head. It was midday.
He yawned, stretched, and stood up. Picking up the terminus and a carbon cube he walked through to the kitchen, opened the terminus and placed it in the center of the kitchen table, cube suspended.
"Protein. I need protein."
Methodical as always, he deftly sliced a chunk of butter into a frying pan, set it on the stove, and when it was hot cracked 3 eggs into it and fried them. Once they had set, he cracked some black pepper onto them and, otherwise unadulterated, slid them onto a plate, and set it down in front of the terminus with a large glass of water.
He slowly ate the eggs. Eyes on the terminus the whole time. Wondering what it was thinking as it sat, quietly purring on the table.
"I'm not leaving this chair without a diamond in my hand."
He picked up the terminus confidently. And toyed with the cube. Spinning it. Stretching it. Teasing it.
He split the cube into a cloud. And swirled it around in the terminus, preparing himself. He ran through in his head everything he had learned about diamonds. He took a deep breath, and cleared his head, closed his eyes, and concentrated.
Half an hour later, things felt, right. He opened his eyes. To a glimmer of blue light. A small, ugly, malformed diamond spun in the terminus in front of him. Small, ugly, malformed, but who cares? He laughed, and grinned.
"Holy. Shit."
This was written as part of NaNoWriMo - an attempt to write a 50,000 word novely before the end of November, and will fit somewhere into the novel.
If you enjoyed it, (or if you didn't but want to support me anyway) you should totally sponsor me for charity! It's going to a great cause, the Scottish Association for Mental Health.
<3 Phil