Science Fiction’s Sustainable Energy

Welcome to the 41st edition of Safe For Work. Safety news, a new podcast episode exploring the ROI of safety investments, scifi short story, and new film. Today’s story from Matt Cantor presents a futuristic setting where two characters, Bund and Dr. Garten, are working on a piece of advanced technology: a "zero-point energy extractor."

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The Extractor’s Edge

Matt Cantor

What is it like?

It is like cracking an egg? Is it like slicing into a melon?

Here is what it is like: it is like the talon of an eagle. Here is what it is like: take the talon of an eagle, and sink it into the soft skin of space. Break the surface-tension, through to the other side, and then drag it along just so-- and?

And what comes pouring out?

“Zero-point energy,” murmurs Dr. Garten. “You ever hear that one about God and the Babel Fish?”

Bund has no idea what she’s talking about. “A fish…”

“You’ve never read ‘Hitchhikers’?”-- she scoffs-- “Come on, Bund. I know it’s on the older side, but you’ve gotta hit the classics! Seriously…”

“Says the one who still hasn’t even started on Dune…”-- Bund shifts the satellite on the work-bench. He turns it a little to the right-- an easier angle to attach the final part.

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“Okay, okay, here’s how it goes-- but it’s better how Douglas Adams tells it, alright? I’m just going from memory-- but here’s how it goes: in the story, there’s this fish that eats language, right? Like words, the way we hear words, but it eats them instead, and digests them, and that’s how it gets its energy.”

Bund blinks at her. “I’m not sure that entirely makes sense.”

“It’s…” she starts-- and then she stops-- and then she starts again-- “If you read the rest of…”-- and again-- “...that’s just the kind of book it is. Aliens come to blow up Earth to build a galactic expressway through the solar system-- it doesn’t make any sense, but the way he writes it, it makes sense. And the Babel Fish eats words-- and it digests them-- and then, as a waste-product-- this is the important part-- as a waste-product, it excretes meanings.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm?”

“Hmmm,” repeats Bund. He’s about halfway through aligning the extractor onto the satellite. He’d be a good bit further than halfway done if Dr. Garten was helping him, but what she’s doing instead is sitting on her hands on the counter off to the side of the workbench, and she’s telling this story-- that’s what she’s doing, and aligning the zero-point extractor onto the satellite by himself is what Bund is doing while she does that, and he’s a good bit more alright with that than other people might have been. He’s just happy she’s here, really. He just likes having her around, really. He doesn’t mind if she wants to sit up on her hands on the counter and tell him a story. “So the way it works is that these Bubble Fishes eat spoken language and excrete the meanings of all the words they eat?”

“Yep! And the whole idea is ‘oh, you put it in your ear and whenever you hear an alien language it eats the words and drops the meaning right into your brain’-- the perfect symbiotic relationship.”

“That seems awfully convenient.”-- Bund gives the zero-point extractor a little nudge to the left. And then another little nudge to the left. It’s entirely his fault that the bolt near the base of it isn’t fully screwed in-- it’s entirely his fault that the head of the bolt is sticking out just far enough that it’s preventing the extractor from properly sliding into place-- it’s entirely his own fault, but he’s doing his best right now to think up at least two other people he could blame. “Convenient,” he echoes to himself, but not as a word-- just as the last series of sounds to come out from his mouth, coming around again to fill the air while he’s thinking of something else altogether.

Dr. Garten doesn’t seem to notice-- “Exactly!” she chirps. “And that’s really what I was trying to get at. That was Douglas Adams’ whole joke-- the Babel Fish is such an insanely convenient bit of biological adaptation for the universe that it stands as absolute, irrefutable proof of God.”

“Right.”

“I mean, his whole joke was that because God must exist purely on faith in order to be meaningful, any absolute proof of God actually stands instead as absolute proof against Him, and thus the existence of the Babel Fish is evidence of a random and pointless Universe-- but forget all that.”

“Okay, it’s forgotten. Why are we talking about this again?”

Bund has taken his pneumatic screwdriver out of the drawer that he’d left it in, and now he’s screwing in the bolt the rest of the way, and hoping that Dr. Garten isn’t going to notice or say anything about it, which she doesn’t, and she doesn’t. “Because it’s-- I mean, it’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it? Not biology, but-- think about it, right? The entire Universe is just completely filled with energy, waiting to be harnessed, just like that-- free energy every, every last square inch, as soon as you figure out how to grab it!”

“As soon as you figure out how to build an extractor like this one,” says Bund, sliding it into place, finally-- and look at that, it fits, and it’s staying put there, too. “It’s like cracking an egg. It’s like slicing into a melon-- simple as that.”

“No, no, here’s what it’s like, it’s like a talon sinking into the soft skin of space and carefully slicing it open, and like sap from a tree-- that’s what it’s like, like sap from a tree, here comes all the power you could ever want.”

“Very convenient,” agrees Bund. “Proof of God? That’s what you’re saying? Like the Bubble Fish?”

“Babel Fish,” says Dr. Garten. “And I don’t know about God, but it’s proof of something.”

“Free energy for everyone.”

“I mean, it’s not just that, though. I’m saying, think about the density-- joules-per-cubic centimeter. The diffusion of it. Build me a zero-point energy bomb.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can’t. You’d be better off with old-fashioned gunpowder. Or imagine that that extractor there malfunctions and discharges its entire energy throughput into your face right now-- what happens?”

Bund pauses and turns to stare at her-- “Sandra.”

“Look, I’m not manifesting it. It’s not going to happen. I’m just saying, what if it does? What happens?”

“I get some burns.”

“And then?”

“And then I’m probably fine. Everyone’s been singed by an extractor once or twice.”-- he gives the side of the satellite a gentle rap with his knuckles-- does knocking on aluminum count the same as knocking on wood? Nothing in here is made of wood.

“It’s proof of something. That’s what I’m saying,” says Dr. Garten. “The Universe knows we screw up half the time.”

SFW Films presents: The Resonator

After crash-landing on a deserted island, a brilliant but self-critical electrical engineer uses his skills to resurrect an ancient, derelict speedboat. As he navigates the challenges of survival and repair, he finds solace in his ability to harness a mysterious global energy field, ultimately realizing that his knowledge is his key to escape—but only if he can conquer his own doubts. Adapted from the short story in issue 32.

See you next week as we take flight with wind power.

Stay safe.