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    JamesSavik
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

Get Into James Shorts - 19. Anybody Could

University of Utah at Cedar City

___________________________________________

"Can I talk to you?"

I looked up from my desk and saw one of my students at my office door.

"Sure Cal, come on in. I'm a little busy trying to figure out why an earthquake fault that hasn't moved in 250,000 years just decided to go renegade and hit the valley with a 4.8."

Cal Morris was one of my brighter geology students. Coming from a dusty little town in Nevada, I suppose you either went completely bonkers or became interested in rocks. He parked his backpack on the floor and sat in the chair across from me. I could tell that something was bugging him.

"It's about the earthquake Doc. I think, no I'm sure I caused it."

I grinned and said, "Cal, you're pretty good but..."

"No Doc, hear me out. Do you remember a paper by a guy named Pasternak last year?"

I searched my memory and yes- I did remember that paper. "Isn't he the guy who suggested that sound waves could trigger a slip fault?"

Cal nodded and said, "Yeah, that's the one, and I can tell you it works."

I said, "Cal, start at the beginning and tell me what happened."

The kid shifted nervously in his seat and said, "One of my friends that works at a junkyard got all sorts of sound equipment out of a totaled car: A 1500 watt amp, four big woofers and a lot of other junk. I paid him $300 for the stuff and put it together to test Pasternak's theory."

"Over the weekend, I went camping out near Dry Springs and set up my experiment with four bass speakers spaced out over a kilometer on the old Dry Springs fault line."

"I set up a sine-wave on a function generator at 1 Kilo-hertz and fed it to the amp and began the experiment. At that low frequency, you couldn't hear it. You could feel it. Nothing happened, so I lowered the frequency to a point where the fault began to pick up the harmonic. Once it started, I freaked and shut down but by that point, the whole fault had picked up the harmonic, and the quake started."

I said, "Hold it." I picked up the seismograph strip and said, "When did you start?"

Cal said, "I powered up at 10:00 and began cycling through frequencies. Apparently, I hit the right one at 20 minutes till eleven."

Sure enough- as I went backwards through the tape, the fault began moving in fits and starts at 10:00. As he moved to lower frequencies, the fault became more and more unstable until at 10:38 the small quake began in earnest."

I said, "That explains all the weirdness that I saw on the seismograph. We're damned lucky there was nothing out there to shake up but gophers and sage brush."

Cal said, "That's why I picked that spot Doc. If it worked, it couldn't hurt anything."

I grinned and said, "What on earth possessed you to try to cause an earthquake Cal?"

He looked at me and said, "Pasternak's article has been out there for over a year. If I could do it with a few hundred dollars worth of junk..."

The implications hit me like a train, "Anybody could do it."

Copyright © 2017 jamessavik; All Rights Reserved.
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Great story, It reminds me of the episode from the Outer Limits, where a grad student had invented cold fusion and how easy it could work as a weapon of terrorism. Science fiction is only a few steps away from being reality at any given time.
While this might not have much character development, it is a short based on thought and ideas, which should be commended.

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This was very good.
As W L commmented it was based on ideas, thought and theories. To me personally, I don't always need or want to everything about the characters. To tell a good story, it isn't always necessary.
Nice job.
tim

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