“Accidents” Part 2

I am shooting for 3 parts here.  I hope to finish this up tomorrow.  The problem, as anyone knows who writes a lot, is that things do not always work out that way.  I hope you enjoyed part one.  I hope you enjoy this part even more.

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“Accidents”  – Part two

The third time had been the worst, well, until now.  A sophomore in college, Tommy was beginning to get along with others.  He had friends; he was in a fraternity.  Then, he had worked on his science project in the frat house.  Nitro glycerin did not sound that difficult to make in the house bath tub.  He had been careful.  He did not really consider it his fault that he had left to get something from his room and another frat member had walked by the room with a back scrubber and tossed it into the concoction.  Unstable at best, the whole thing had gone up in a second.  The passing fraternity member had ended up in the hospital with a concussion and minor burns.  The bathroom and parts of the second floor had not been so lucky.  The group threw him out of the house and out of the fraternity; the College Board had thrown him out of college and he had lost all the second semester hours he had worked so hard for.  Word had gotten out and no other college in the state wanted him in their on their campus or in their school.  His parents had been devastated.

Tommy had managed to get a job working at the hardware store in his home town with the condition he not attempt any experiments or improvements at all while in the store.   He had kept that condition.  His parents would not allow him back home, so he had managed to rent a small, broken-down shack on the edge of town.  The owner would not be able to rent it to anyone else for the price he charged Tommy.  He also had demanded a sizable damage deposit, “just in case.”  Johnny used the shed out back as his laboratory.  He had decided he was not going to give up his genius even if he did not always think things through.  He had done some small things, but three months ago, he had stumbled (not literally) into a great idea.  Well, he had thought so at the time.

The idea that he could create an energy source to run cars on the oxygen in the air was not new, but his method certainly was.  He worked tirelessly each night after work and all through the weekends, spending all his extra money and his savings, to make his dream come true.  The contraption would have to be made smaller, but that would be his buyer’s problem.  The table-sized piece of equipment needed an AAA battery to get it started, then, theoretically it would run on the oxygen available.  It was, actually, a sunshine maker.  The air went in one end and was converted to the same radiation as sunlight.  This way the current solar-powered cars could be adapted to it and not need gas at all since the air would be available at night too.

Tommy had been proud and a little nervous.  He had not been nervous about possible problems; that had never been an issue with him.  No, he had been nervous that when he pulled the lever, the machine would make some noise and do nothing.  He had even crossed his fingers when he turned it on.

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Namaste,

Scott