by Paul Rogov.
It defied the laws of physics. The Black Operations of the National Security Agency tried to corral him. Journalists, interested in renewable energy, tried to pick his brain. You-Tube watchers—so drawn to the intrigues surrounding what seemed to be a simple experiment—tried to replicate it and claim victory for themselves. Philo, a truck driver, had been tinkering in his garage and constructed a machine. Lying on a table, it looked like a record player, or the spinning plate of a Victrola. It was not plugged in to anything; there were no batteries that it ran on; it did not have a fuel tank, yet it moved on its own: the disk making revolutions without any external force acting upon it; just moving there, whirling around, effortlessly, picking up gradual speed until it achieved equilibrium.
After taking trip to the Science-and-Surplus store, Philo came home yet again, took another metal disc, glued six domino-looking magnets along the arc of its perimeter—spaced apart from one another at a specific intervals—set the disk on a gyre, attached a stator motor to a side bar which had a larger magnet and watched the disk rotate, after he gently self-started it with the push of a finger. He stood there, in the den—where his pet birds chirped in cages, his three cats sometimes scurried, on the carpet, near his feet, as he watched the revolutionary magnet motor spin for hours on end on the coffee table—mystified by the fact nothing powered the mechanism aside from magnets repelling magnets. My God, he thought. This is fucking nuts! He fiddled with the calibration. Carefully seeking out what he called a “sweet-spot,” in which one could self-start the disk‘s revolution at an apt origin (gluing the magnets a little to the right, or a little to the left), he was flabbergasted when journalists started showing up in his daily life. Cameras flashed by the porch-steps leading up to his apartment. He ascended steps, after returning from the store. “I’m just a tinkerer! I’m no one!” “One comment for the record, please, Mr. Gonzales!” “I can’t right now! I’m busy. Tomorrow, all right?” He shut the door, shoved fingers between the blinds for a minute, watched the seekers gradually disappear after an hour, went to back work, grew annoyed with the constant phone ringing in the home, so started taking phone-calls. “It’s such a pleasure to speak with you, Philo. We’re so excited about this! Do you mind if we record this interview?”
Believers wanted to know everything about Philo’s magnet motor: how it worked, what materials he used, the calibrations, what he thought about what actually powered the contraption— (“it’s from the sea of vacuum energy! This verifies it all!”— what it meant for the planet and humankind—for the scientific cognoscenti knew, if the experiment could be replicated, one could power entire cities, even countries, with the sophisticated off-shoot inventions of Philo’s prototype.
Philo stood in the living room, in a T-shirt and blue jeans, with the phone receiver at his ear, scratching a bare chin, wondering what to do with all the interest in his work. He was pleased with himself, talked to his wife, tried to watch T.V., though could not stop obsessing about the implications of what he had constructed. This single high-schoolish experiment rivaled any scientific inquiry into hydrogen fusion as the cutting-edge of green energy’s future: it suggested the possibility of harvesting “perpetual energy”; like being able to harness the movement of a satellite orbiting the earth via a magnetic field alone—making tractor-beams possible; flying saucers possible; by harnessing the force that made planets rotate by transforming electromagnetic zero-point oscillations in the quantum field into classical mechanical energy. . . .it was beyond what the world had yet understood about physics, except in the research of Nikolo Tesla.
“It’s plugged into something.”
“No.”
“Where’s the power source?”
Philo’s twin, an engineer, showed up when he heard about what had been done.
“There isn’t one. It’s just magnets.”
“You’re fucking kidding me! Philo, tell me, I’m your brother, where is the fucking power source?”
Yet there were no power source, save from the vacuum of the quantum field.
His brother examined the machine, agreed it worked, then left.
So thrilled after checking the contraption and watching it spin for three days and nights, Philo—a clean-shaven vegetarian who loathed human cruelty, did not drink. nor smoke—upped the ante. He wanted to go public. He had been working at truck driver all his life, though had also been working with nuts and bolts and wires and gyres for over three decades, yet this was it: he hit the mother of all discoveries. After a lengthy discussion, he was encouraged by a journalist, named Howard, to post his discoveries on You-Tube. “This is revolutionary! Definitely show people what you can do. Trust the process, okay?” “Okay, man. Though I am scared! All right. I’m scared!”
Philo agreed—then started making videos, which mystified and repelled the on-line populace. The spinning disk was within the frame of the camera’s capturing gaze. The experiments were executed and, in time, split the public into believers and non-believers. The scoffers wanted to find anything that was wrong with it: pointed out there had to be something under the machine’s base; that it was plugged into an external power source, so he adjusted the angle to appease their demands. Yet, those who supported him knew what the discovery meant: it meant his Stonehenge model (hypothesis for powering cars and cities via the rotating disks of electromagnetic fields) was the fate of humankind.
“I’m thinking about it. But I want to do it right.”
“Yes, Philo. You think about it, for this is special.”
“You’re right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you for you help.”
Philo hung up the phone after he explained to Howard that he did not want any money for his discovery: that he wanted to open-source it—that is, share the knowledge he had acquired as a humanitarian, with the hope the scientific community could find a means to power the planet—which he hoped would make a difference “despite a two-hundred-plus year reliance on fossil fuels—bought up by the ruling oligarchies that secretly condoned and spawned geo-political strife and bloodshed.” Drawn towards the intrigues—(though not entirely sure about with whom to share his findings, except with those interested in constructing a replica)—and at the request of the journalist who ran a web-site that kept fans and renegade engineers up to date on cutting-edge news about renewable energy—Philo began to make instructional videos on the internet.
He set up the camera, stood on the periphery, spoke about his invention, after putting the machine on a glass table for all to see.
His wife walked into the room. “Sweetheart, for supper do you want ham?”
Philo looked at his wife, while the motor spun. “Honey, what do you think?”
“About what,” said his wife. “The motor?”
“About the new one. Just look.”
His wife looked at the motor, looked at her husband and said: “Very nice. I like it.
His caged birds were chirping, singing like a spoonful of beckoning piccolos.
As the video ran, he kept explaining how the machine worked: giving monologues video after video; turning on and turning off the camera; even losing sleep and weight. Before long, two weeks passed; he posted over sixty videos; Youtube was in an uproar. Glowing window boxes of profile comments had filled up in the thousands and ranged from downright repulsion to ecstatic support: “I realize you do not understand how this works and, yet you’re not engineer—we cannot replicate it. It cannot be done! This is impossible. You’re an typical American idiot. Put it on a glass table. We want to see the whole thing from an aerial view!” “You’re a genius, Philo. My team and I hope to follow your instructions on your videos and then gather our own data.” “Do you think you can really fool us? Where did you go to graduate school?! Don’t you know a video and the human eye is the most deceptive form of observation?”
He got hate-mail. He was ridiculed from everything to his race to his religion.
He was accused of not being an engineer with proper credentials.
For one whole month, others tried to replicate the experiment. They bought all the same material—the aluminum disk, the chrome gyre—yet they could not find the exact same magnets that Philo bought at Science-And-Surplus, which ran out. People were on waiting lists to get them special order. They constructed the machine like him with other magnets, yet could not find the sweet spot. Philo all the while, sat at his laptop, got up, walked over to and fiddled with the machine, walk back to the laptop—got lambasted, and flooded with profile comments. He suspected he felt what the Wright Brothers had once felt: how mainstream science condemned them for constructing an airplane; and had dismissed what they were doing always-already, in advance. I’m the one that’s nuts? These people are the one who are nuts, he thought. I’m just a truck driver.
Yet, those in the know knew better.
NSA officers showed up in suits—-knocked the door, then burst in the house.
“United States government, sit the fuck down. Sit down in the chair.”
“What? Why? What’s going on?”
The agent looked at him: slicked back hair, dapper. “You are being detained.”
“What do you mean I’m being detained? What for?”
“Where is the material? Tell us where it is!”
“Material? It’s in the room. Where you going?”
More agents filed into the room. His wife ran into the bedroom and shut the door. Philo followed her into the bedroom, while he listened to the agents search his house. He thought he would hear books falling off his bookshelves, porcelain being smashed, even hammers tapping on the walls; yet, nothing of the sort transpired. There was a knock on the bedroom door. The door opened. It was the first agent, donning sunglasses, as if the light in the room was too bright for him, and he had been visually repudiated.
“Okay, we’re done. We’ll contact you at our convenience.”
The agents rushed out of the apartment with boxes. The front door then shut.
“Wait! What the hell—?” Philo walked into the living room; he saw that his cats had pissed all over the carpet; the bird’s cages had their tarps removed from them, and were on the floor like rags, so one could see inside the metal bars, in which the birds, frail, sat on wooden perches, near the water bottles and the bowls of sunflower seeds. He loved his birds, though was surprised the government did not shoot them. He looked at the rest of the living room and his magnet motor was gone. Gone! Oh, my God, its gone! I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. All that was left was the empty space where his laptop was: where the spinning disks were, across from it, at the coffee table. He walked into the den; and, he saw that they had taken the larger machine, with the larger wheel, too. He checked to see what they took in the garage, then called out : “Honey! They went through all the boxes, the experiment; the camping gear—all is gone!”
Shaken, he called Howard, the journalist, immediately:
“Where are you? Come here now. There’s been trouble! I’ve been trying to do this thing and now the Black Ops came in here and took my stuff. My work, man! My work! What kind of world is this? What kind —.”
“Wait, Philo slow down. I’m at the airport. I think–”
“Slow down what? There is nothing to slow down about. We’ve been raped! They took it without any warning, as if they had been following the whole story. Whose side are they on? This is for national security? I don’t get it! I don’t. And if you are to tell me what it’s for—then I’ll understand. I was just trying to help, just trying to help; and was even going to go public with all this and now—now—.” Philo choked up. “I don’t even know if I will get my stuff back now! All those years of work for nothing!”
After being calmed down by Howard, who was so filled with compassion for this lone inventor, Philo did not know what to do save listen to his new friend’s point of view.
“I strongly urge you not to tell them anything. They don’t know the sweet spot. So they can’t get the thing to work, right? Right, Philo? Are you there?”
“Right,” said Philo. “You’re absolutely right. Fuck. They’re here again—.”
Philo hung up the phone. He disappeared—went off radar for two days. Some avid readers, who had been following the story on the journalist’s web-site, thought Philo had been kidnapped or was giving in, in a dim-lit room, sitting there, bleeding there, tied to a chair, beaten; subdued by harassment, even torture; yet before long, Philo, called Howard from a discrete location and said the materials had been returned to him: that he was told that he had to cooperate with them or else; that they wanted not only the machine itself, but wanted to know how he constructed it. He told them everything was on YouTube; yet, YouTube was not enough for them. They wanted more. They were drawn to the plan. They wanted to sign him up for a role in the new administration because the V.P. was in Chicago that day; Philo could meet with him; all would be well; if he just did as he were told. Yet Howard told him more what he thought about the Blacks Ops: saying they were the same people who worked for Hitler and Stalin and took people out; that they did mind-control and human sacrificing; they were pure evil; to not believe them; they were 666, the Antichrist’s regime, and would stop at nothing for global domination; for Philo’s machine would shut down the oil markets; and, there would be no reason to fight major wars. And Philo agreed. Why else were they so drawn to those magnets? It would become transparent to the world: the world would have to contend.
Philo walked back to his laptop after an NSA agent returned, having brought him back the material, as if the whole thing was a cycle. He was given an apology, closed the door, logged back onto the internet, where he noticed more people had started getting interested in the doing of the experiments. There were over two million hits on hits on his You-Tube account. That and that is wrong. That is supposed to be like this. How much did it weigh? How tall was it? What was its width? What was its depth? How much did the magnets cost? Where and when were they magnetized? Did he have a patent? Could he FAX to them his autograph? There were intrigues; engineers were trying to debunk him. They said there was no way the contraption could move on its own: that it was not self-sufficient; Zero-Point energy did not exist; and, there had to be a catch to the whole thing because what they were seeing with their own eyes and what they knew, incontrovertibly overturned two hundred year understanding of thermodynamics. . . .
Philo re-started the motor. He glanced up at the light in the living room.
He looked up at the twitching moths that gathered in the dome encasing.
A hour later, a new video ran out of time. Engineers zoomed in like vultures.
Ten years later, scientific discoveries—perpetual motion via Zero-Point Energy—was written about in glossy, mainstream scientific journals and confirmed as true.
There was applause at conferences. The media was attracted to the story.
Several days later, however, a fish-line was discovered below the base of the Philo’s machine. Philo from that point forward, packed his things, threw suitcases and garbage bags full of clothes into the passenger side of his sixteen-wheeler truck, then calmly drove up the Interstate and disappeared, never to be heard of again.