Roswell Fanatics

The lab session was in full swing, giving Mr. Raff a little free time. He reached in to his brief case and pulled out the grade sheets he had printed on his computer last evening and put them up on the room bulletin board.

"I am posting your quarterly grades," he said to the class. The fact the man even believed in grades would have identified him in some circles as an educational troglodyte but that he would actually post them - publicly - would have amazed and appalled a number of his faculty colleagues. In particular those faculty members who considered themselves knowledgeable in the 'social sciences' - a term than made Mr. Raff shudder would have been highly offended.

Mr. Raff was well aware of the current educational emphasis on 'self-esteem' and there being 'no wrong answers' if that was the way the student truly perceived the problem. What was the 'correct' answer for one student, they would say, was not necessarily the ‘correct’ answer for another. But Mr. Raff lived in a different world than that of the psychobabblers. He lived in a world of science, where there were unfortunate consequences for not knowing the difference between H2O and H2SO4, where a future doctor or nurse 'just making a decimal point error' was the difference between a patient getting well or dying an avoidable and perhaps grotesque death of an overdose, where someone not quite understanding the physics of the bridge or building they were designing could kill tens and hundreds of people.

He also belonged to a world where it was believed everyone needed to know where they stood academically, not just their own grades but their grades relative to the people that they were competing against. It was - after all - still somewhat of a Darwinian dog-eat-dog world. He was, in short, one of those old-fashioned teachers who believed kids should be challenged - not just spoonfed. Nonetheless, Mr. Raff wasn't without human feelings. As he watched Miss Liz Parker sidle away from her lab partner and go over to the bulletin board and glance at it, shaking her head in annoyance and disbelief, he had more than a little sympathy for her.

As far as quiz and test results went, Liz was tops academically. She had spent a lot of time in the last four weeks drilling her lab partner about science and it showed. Despite the Troy girl having almost no background in science and even less interest in it, Pamela had a solid C-minus on her tests which combined with her lab grades of C+ kept her academically eligible for her cheerleading despite what Mr. Raff would have considered long odds after the first class quiz. Clearly all the drilling of Miss Troy was reflected in Liz's own academic scores, she had yet to get less than 100% on a quiz or test. The lab score was a totally different story. Liz shared her lab partner's score - a C+. That brought Liz Parker’s overall grade down considerably. Despite her academic smarts, she was struggling to keep from falling to fourth overall in class standings. What’s more, if things didn’t improve in the lab portion of the course dramatically, it would be the first time in her life that ‘the perfect Miss Parker’ failed to get an A in a class.

It wasn't that Liz didn't understand - even excel – here too, it was simply that her lab partner was worse than useless in lab, generally making mistakes that caused their projects to be late or of relatively poor quality despite the best efforts of Liz Parker. The Troy girl had little background, scarcely paid attention to directions, and spent most of her time flirting with every boy in the class that noticed her too- tight blouses that revealed altogether too much cleavage for a seventh grader. Half the boys in class ogled Miss Troy, including to Mr. Raff’s initial surprise, Max Evans. That particular observation was explained, however, when he saw Max take some concentrated sulfuric acid away from Miss Troy that she had erroneously taken from the chemical locker instead of the very dilute acid that they were supposed to be using in the experiment. The look on his face had suggested that far from being enchanted by the girls obvious endowment, Max regarded Pamela as little more than a threat to Liz Parker – akin to the scorpions he had once crushed in his bare hands when they threatened her. Unfortunately, Liz Parker had also noticed the boys interest in Miss Troy – although Mr. Raff had a hunch she was misinterpreting it.

In fairness, Mr. Raff did believe that he sort of owed Liz Parker some help here. She had kept Miss Troy from making several rather egregious mistakes herself - filling the alcohol lamp with diethyl ether being the notable exception. It had taken Mr. Raff - and the fire department - almost fifteen minutes to get the ensuing blaze under control and that entire lab period was pretty much ruined. Had it not been for young Mr. Evans and his quick action to contain the blaze once the lamp exploded it would have likely been far worse - although Mr. Raff was pretty sure that Liz Parker was giving the young man little credit for that. She hadn't been particularly nice to him since their break-up.

Perhaps, he thought, break-up wasn't exactly the right word. Although they had been a twosome for years neither had been of an age or maturity where it seemed to be exactly romantic, but Mr. Raff had been a teacher long enough to recognize at least the beginnings of puppy-love in the longing gazes of the girl last year before whatever had happened between them had happened. He suspected Liz Parker, for all her intellectual maturity, wasn't quite emotionally mature enough to be able to handle a romantic relationship just yet, and Max was significantly behind her in social development. Mr. Raff assumed that she'd pushed - he'd resisted - and there were now hard feelings over that which was a shame because they were the finest science team he'd ever had amongst his students Max having an innate talent for chemistry - Liz perhaps marginally better in biology. It was also apparent that both of them were currently fairly miserable - each in their own way.

But whatever the situation, Mr. Raff figured he owed Liz for her assistance on the Pamela Troy front. He needed to give her an opportunity to make up academically for the albatross she now had around her neck. That was only fair.

As she looked at the class standings posted on the board, Liz shook her head in annoyance. ‘This is SO unfair,’ she thought – instantly hating herself for having that thought. The expression was so – Pamela Troy.

She looked back at her lab partner – who was threatening to let their refluxing flask boil over while she wiggled her oversize boobs at Jimmy Jacobs who was ogling her from the next lab bench. There went ANOTHER experiment. If Pam paid half the attention to their labwork that she did to flaunting herself at the boys in the room, they’d have an A in lab and she’d not have to worry about losing her own 4.0 average. Half the boys in the class were looking at her – including HIM.

It was HIS fault – that was clear. Had he not decided they were so damn different they’d still be lab partners and Pamela Troy would no doubt be partnered with Jimmy Jacobs or some other boy that cared more about mammary glands than he did about science. But even that wasn’t true, she decided. As much as Max ogled Pam, he might have partnered with her. But even that would have been better, she tried to tell herself. Then his grades would have suffered – not hers. But the fact was, she knew that she was lying when she said that. She didn’t want Max partnered with Pam, and really didn’t like him ogling her at all - especially her overdeveloped boobs. She thought he was different from the boys who did that.

‘Different...,’ she thought. The word itself seemed painful to her. She watched as Max moved over to the lab bench next to Pamela and reached out silently to turn the Bunsen burner down on the refluxing flask.

‘Just flipping great,’ thought Liz with unaccustomed anger. ‘Apparently she’s not too ‘different’ to pay attention to.’

Had Liz been in a better mood she would have no doubt realized that by keeping Pamela’s experiment from being ruined he was keeping her experiment from being ruined as well, but this afternoon Liz was really in no mood to be charitable.

‘This is Max’s fault,’ she thought. ' All of it.’

“Attention everyone,” said Mr. Raff. “I have an announcement about this year’s Science Fair competition.”

The class hushed down as the eyes of the students went to Mr. Raff.

"The High School-level Science Fair has changed their rules. As long as the project passes a screening test for quality of science, entries will be accepted for judging for students in junior high school - as young as seventh grade. You are all eligible to compete at the local level, with the five projects judged the best going to the state competition which is being held in Clovis this year - just a little ways up the road. The top two projects at State will represent New Mexico at the Western Regionals at Boulder Colorado. Mrs. Raff and I will be going along on that particular trip to serve as chaperones.

Now I realize that competition at the high school level represents a sizable investment in time and effort, so this is what I’m going to do. Electing to participate in the science fair will bring the potential for extra credit – possibly substantial extra credit – for students in the seventh grade. If your project is deemed eligible, five points will be added to your final class average for this semester, and if you are in the top five at Clovis, you will receive a letter grade of 'A' for the second semester as well and – before I here the moans and groans out there – this will not come at the expense of the class curve – those of you not wishing to participate don’t have to and they will not be penalized in any way. You can compete as partners if you wish, with both partners receiving the extra credit –as long as both share equally in the work of course.”

It seemed to Mr. Raff like a perfect plan to patch up whatever was the problem with his star science team. He knew the ‘perfect Miss Parker’ was competitive enough when it came to grades that she’d do almost anything to avoid getting a ‘B’ at the semester. Mr. Evans was a strange kid in some ways, but one thing he wasn’t was a poker face. It had been pretty obvious all quarter that Max was wishing that he – not the well-endowed young Ms. Troy, was working at Liz’s side. It wasn’t really the sort of puppy-love that Liz had been showing last year – more just the sort of blind devotion the kid had shown when he’d pulled the scorpions off her. Mr. Raff had no illusions about Miss Troy. The fact that she was in this class was simply a scheduling convenience. The girl had no interest in science and this would – in all likelihood – be the only science course she’d take other than the one year of high school science required for graduation – at least if she had anything to say about it. She wasn’t going to do a damn thing she could avoid, and she certainly could avoid this.

No, it wasn’t intended as match-making – Mr. Raff’s mind really didn’t run to such things, hence the three years it had taken Mrs. Raff to reel him in once she hooked him, but he did see it as a sure-fire way to get his number one science team back working with each other. He was, of course, mistaken. But then that was neither the last or the worst mistake he would make today.

No sooner had Mr. Raff made his announcement than Liz's mind went in to high gear. If she could simply keep Miss over-endowed from making any major mistakes on their joint labwork, the extra five points would get her up to an 'A' for the semester. She'd have to ask the girl if she wanted to do it - strictly pro forma of course - the girl would rather be boiled in oil than do a bit more science than she could avoid. The problem was going to be second semester, when the classwork would be harder and the labwork would be much harder. All the tight sweaters in the world weren't going to help that girl with Mr. Raff if she couldn't keep up with the labwork and when Pam's labwork hit second semester she was going to be in deep trouble - and Liz with her. But not if she could get one of those three runner-up positions at state. She thought she could - knew she could actually if Max still wanted to partner with her, but even if he didn't it at least put her second semester grade in her own hands - not Pamela Troy's.

Her hand went up almost immediately, waving back and forth briefly to get Mr. Raff's attention. "I want to do a project, Mr. Raff," she said, turning to look at Pamela and trying to keep the distaste off her face as she saw the girl jiggling herself at Jimmy Jacobs again, "... Pam, do you want to be my partner?"

Pamela looked away from Jimmy Jacobs in amazement. Pam knew she had a 'C' - a particularly solid 'C' at that, with half the semester already gone. It was crazy even to consider devoting more time to something as stupid as science - not when there was cheerleading and guys like Jimmy Jacobs to spend time with. Little Miss Scientist was several tacos shy of a combo-plate if she thought this girl was going to do extra credit science work with her. "Uh, no, Liz. Regrettably my cheerleading practice time and, uh..." she looked at Jacobs and smiled, "...extensive social calendar, won't allow me to help you with your little experiments..."

Mr. Raff's eyes instantly turned to Max Evans. "Hmm, it seems like Miss Parker's regular lab partner is going to be too busy to help her. Is there anyone...anyone at all that might like to partner with her. Just raise your hand."

Actually there were a few kids who might have liked to partner with Liz in the class. They saw how she'd carried Pam for the whole quarter. But they'd also seen her intenseness - the girl had spent two summers out in the heat of the quarry separating million year old bones from the gravel, for Pete's sake. Even those who liked science thought that her project was probably going to ber a little too intense for them, whatever it was and doubted that anyone - except for Evans, could keep up with her. It would be simpler for them to do less involved projects with partners whose intensity and aptitude more nearly matched there own. The hands stayed down.

Max looked at Liz and he wanted badly to raise his hand. Hell, he'd have GIVEN his right hand to be working by her side again. But Liz had made it clear four weeks ago- she hadn't wanted him as a lab partner. That was a bridge that he'd burned behind him when he had made his commitment to let her go - to quit being a social millstone around her neck so that she could someday find her special someone. He would always love Liz, but if he truly loved her he needed to let her go to her own destiny - a destiny that could never include him. He choked back a sob and kept his hand at his side.

The fact was, Liz was overjoyed that Pam had declined her offer to partner. They would have gotten the five points for participation that would have kicked Liz's grade up to an 'A' and Pam's grade up to a 'B-', but that wouldn't have been much help in the second semester. She was less overjoyed with Mr. Raff's public appeal for a replacement partner for Pam. The sudden silence emphasized the fact that no one wanted to work with her. She followed Mr. Raff's eyes to Max and her cheeks grew even more flushed. Mr. R probably didn't know about Max turning down the opportunity to work with her at the quarry all summer and certainly didn't know that when she'd all but bared her soul to Max to ask that they start doing boy-girl stuff this year, Max had turned her down flat with a lame excuse. different....' the words in her mind still burned with the pain of that moment.

But what Mr. R was doing now - looking at Max expectantly - only emphasized to everyone that Max didn't care for her anymore - if he ever had. Liz sighed deeply. The last had been unfair - she knew that. Max had done too much for her - put his life on the line for her too many times - for her to ever believe that he didn't care. It was just that - Oh God, the dream had been so beautiful ... so lovely. The reality was so different. He paid more attention to Pam than he did to her anymore, damn him.

"I'd rather work by myself," said Liz. "I wouldn't ask anyone to work as hard as I'm going to work. I'm not just going for the five points, I'm going for at least one of the honorable mentions at Clovis."

Mr. Raff looked down at Max and Liz with more than a little disappointment. This had not worked out like he'd planned. "Well, if that's your decision, Miss Parker. If anyone else wants to do a project with a partner or an individual project, just let me know by the end of the week. I'll get yout the application and parental permission forms. Who knows, my wife and I may be taking one of you to the regional finals in Boulder Colorado."

The words were meant as encouragement, but they struck fear into the heart of Max Evans. He liked Mr. Raff - he really did - but the man was the stereotypical absent-minded professor type. He had almost let Pamela Troy grab the wrong acid out of the lab cabinet and, in fact, probably would have, had Max himself not intervened. Heck, it might have been nitric acid and toluene and the girl could have accidentally made TNT and blown up the class - which would almost certainly have hurt Liz - maybe even beyond his ability to save or heal her. What's more, his stupid system of giving both lab partners the same grade was hurting Liz's chances of keeping her 4.0.

Liz was royally pissed about her low grade, and Liz could be as determined as anyone he knew. She probably WOULD get judged as one of the top two projects at state - she was THAT determined to keep her grades up. As much as he liked Mr. Raff, he didn't trust him to keep Liz out of danger - heck, the man hadn't been much help with the scorpions, that was for sure. No, If Liz was going to be exposed to danger in Clovis or - God forbid - Boulder Colorado, Max wanted to be there.

Max's right hand went up. "I want to do an individual project of my own," said Max. No way was he going to let a partner hold him back. he'd do whatever was necessary to be there for Liz - the same as always. Even if she no longer cared for him, he knew he'd never stop loving her.

'I want to do an individual project of my own...' The words burned in her head and her cheeks burned with unspoken anger. Unspoken, but not unthought... I don't believe this. He has the highest lab grade in class, and we are tied on the tests and quizzes. He had the chance to work with me on this and wasn't interested and now....' This went beyond rude and thoughtless. Max was actually competing with her for special credit that he didn't even need. This was the final straw. She choked back the sobs and blinked away tears as she thought of all she'd done for him. She'd given him the best years of her life - albeit years she had only because he'd saved her repeatedly - but, was this to be her reward? First he refuses to date her this year - she might have forgiven him that, they were both a little young for dating - certainly Max was, but then he refused to work with her at the quarry - and it was certainly HIS fault she got stuck with Pam whose 32Bs had as much IQ as her whole damn brain.

But this - THIS - Max had AGAIN turned down an opportunity to work with her and was NOW jumping in to the competition - apparently for the sole purpose of beating her to get one of those runner-up slots. OK, so she knew the boy wasn't particularly socially adept -that had become obvious over the years - but still... She couldn't believe that he'd do this to her ... to compete against her when she was just trying to get the grade she deserved. There was no way he could be doing this by mistake. Whatever other failings Max had, he could do math.

She would, she decided with all the righteousness of a wronged not-quite-yet fourteen year old, never forgive Max for this.

Friday came and the students in Mr. Raff's class who wanted to participate in the High School level Science Fair met with him after school. There were, in the end, two students - Liz Parker and Max Evans. Oh, there had been more - quite a few students considered participating - the prospect of a five points being added to their semester average was quite an inducement. But then they looked at the screening criteria for Mr. Raff to 'deem the project eligible.' Participation was going to require an awful lot of work.

No, there were going to be no easy or scientifically lame projects accepted. You weren't going to get five points for making a fire extinguisher powered by baking soda and vinegar and put out a couple of candles - this had to be original research. One by one all the students had looked at the work they would have to do and dropped the idea like your proverbial hot rock - all but these two, which was more or less what Mr. Raff had expected, even if he had thought they would do a joint project. Now was the time that they would be explaining to him the concept of their project - one of the steps necessary to have him 'deem the project eligible.'

Liz had been giving Max the cold shoulder for the entire week, something that neither Max nor Mr. Raff had actually had the social sense to realize. In their defense, Max only shared the two classes with Liz, and nobody socialized in Mrs. Huttlemeyer's Algebra class, she didn't allow it. Since Max sat almost diagonally across the room from Liz in Science it wasn't all that readily apparent that she was shunning him and in lab - well, after Pam Troy's latest near-miss at blowing up the class, Mr. Raff had finally put the chemical locker off limits to all students except the two he trusted with keys. Those two could give out chemicals to the other students - making sure they got the right one and had at least a reasonable idea what to do with them. Those two students, of course, were Max and Liz. Unfortunately that kept both of them busy enough they really didn't have time to interact - or even conspicuously NOT interact - as was Liz's intention. So although Liz had been doing a slow burn ever since Max announced that he too would be putting in a science fair project independent of hers, Max and Mr. Raff were pretty much blissfully unaware of that. As one might anticipate, that would cause problems on the first occasion that an opportunity did arise for such interaction - which happens to bring us back to Friday, about ten minutes after school.

It was hard to describe the feelings going through young Miss Parker's mind as she entered the room and saw Mr. Raff and Max. Although he was normally her favorite teacher, Liz was more than a trifle irked at the man for his policy of giving both lab partners the same grade. It was all too much like the elementary teachers who would punish the whole class if some individual did something wrong and they were unable to determine just who did it. Their reasoning was that group punishment would either brake the 'code of silence' of the remaining students or would cause 'peer pressure' to be brought against the guilty party. Liz had always considered the practice dumb as dirt.

The one-grade policy for both lab partners seemed equally irrational. Heck, Mr. Raff trusted her judgment in lab - that's why she was carrying a key to the reagent locker- doing his job of keeping idiots like Pam from accidentally incinerating half the building. That alone ought to have told the man that she deserved a better lab grade than the one she shared with Ms. Inadvertent-arsonist. But as vexed as she was with Mr. Raff, that was all but forgotten when she came through the door and saw .... HIM.

HIM, of course, was Max Evans. Liz had been waiting all week for SOME reaction from him. She couldn't have possibly made it any plainer that she was mad at him - at least not without actually telling him that aloud. She'd hoped that he might have at least a modicum of shame about what he was doing, and had actually entertained the fantasy that he would not even show up at this meeting - that he would just drop the idea of competing against her altogether. Obviously, she had failed to completely understand just what a rat he was.

She hadn't exactly asked him to marry her last year - just go on a few lousy boy-girl dates. OK, so the big M and a home and family MAY have been in the long -term plan but, heck, a girl's got to plan ahead, doesn't she? Besides, it wasn't like HE could have known what she was planning.

But no, he virtually dumped her, then won't even work on the same summer job with her, then turns down an opportunity to work with her on a project that would help both their grades - not that Max needed it, because he didn't have a dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks lab partner - but instead - INSTEAD, he was COMPETING with her - trying to scuttle her opportunity to get a decent grade.

And it wasn't an accident, either. She knew it wasn't, because he was real good at word-problems.

'Hey Max,' she thought to herself. 'If student L was hanging on to an 'A' by the skin of her teeth first semester because she was sharing a lab grade with student P, Why would student M want to sabotage student L's ability to get extra credit second semester - when the work's going to be harder and student P will be an even greater millstone around student L's neck? What? What's the answer? Oh, BECAUSE WE ARE TOO DIFFERENT? That makes no sense whatsoever!'

It was probably fair to say that Liz was not having a happy afternoon. It was equally fair to say that both Max and Mr. Raff were - as of yet - pretty oblivious to that fact. That would change.

"Ah, Miss Parker," said Mr. Raff. "Now we can get started. The general theme as you know is alternative energy and the environment. I've actually already been discussing Mr. Evans proposed project. It is an attempt to find a wind turbine shape optimized for desert conditions. It sounds quite interesting, actually," said Mr. Raff, "...if he can somehow come up with the right airfoil design to pull it off."

That instantly irritated Liz. She and Max had a discussion on that last year. Max had told her he didn't even think such systems could ever be put into general use, because they were too visually objectionable to people, posed hazards to migrating birds, and generally threatened the fragile desert environment. Moreover, they would require an expensive electrical grid that would itself further complicate matters. 'He's proposing something he doesn't even believe in - JUST so he can submarine me. That is SO LOW....'

Max looked at Liz, remembering their conversation about this issue. The Altamont Pass in California was the largest collection of wind turbines in the world. It was enormously expensive, generated relatively trivial electricity compared to more conventional sources, and chopped up raptors and migratory birds. Even if he could improve on it, he still didn't think this idea was politically palatable, even once he worked out the science.

But it was also apparent the judges of the competition did think it was viable - or at least they hoped it was. Besides, this really wasn't about advancing the frontiers of science - not this year. It was about scoring high enough in the grading to be able to be there wherever Liz was. Who could predict what crazy things could happen to her in Clovis or Boulder?

Liz's slow burn over the treachery of Max Evans was abruptly interrupted by a question from Mr. Raff bringing her back - if only briefly - from the thought of what a lower order of life Max really was....

"Well, Liz, what do you propose for a project?"

"I think I will do the project I discussed last year - deriving a biofuel for automobiles from the terpenoids in Agave."

"Liz, I don't think that's a good idea," said Max, who wanted her to be able to get the grade she wanted and didn't want her to waste her time. His ability to manipulate the molecular structure of things gave Max an almost intuitive feeling for chemical reactions. He could tell how difficult it was to complete a chemical reaction by how difficult it was for him to make that reaction happen and he'd actually run the experiment on a small sample of the tequila his parents used to make Margeritas. True, the reaction was exothermic, but the energy of activation - the amount of energy it took to strip the pyrophosphate residues off the terpenoids and condense the isoprene units into fuel was high.
"The energy of activation for that is prohibitively high," said Max, trying to be helpful. "I think you are wasting your time...."

Mr. Raff had - over the last few years - gotten used to Max saying things like that. The boy seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of chemistry that was seldom mistaken - one of the reasons that Mr. Raff had trusted Max to have a key to the chemical locker and double-check any withdrawals the other students - excepting Liz - might need. It took Mr. Raff only a few seconds to pull out an organic chemistry and a physical chemistry book and verify Max's assertions.

"I believe Max is correct, Liz. First you'd have to distill the terpenoids from the agave - that would take a lot of energy. Then you'd have to pour a huge amount of energy into activating the terpenods themselves and getting them to start condensing. By the time you got done, I can't see where this experiment would be a net energy gain at all."

"I will figure out how to do it," replied Liz, her eyes squinting in anger as she looked at Max.

"But Liz, the only way I can see for you to make that chemical reaction work is to use a catalyst - like fine platinum and palladium. That would be really expensive to buy - even just enough for a science project, but what would be worse would be that you'd need about five atmospheres of pressure and a fair amount of heat to make it work, even with the catalyst..."

What actually worried Max was the next step - when the condensed isoprene units - now high test gasoline - met the catalyst at 75 pounds per square inch and a temperature well above their flash point. The container would go off like a fuel-air explosive. There wouldn't be enough of Liz left to heal....

"I'm afraid Max might be right, Liz," said Mr. Raff. "The contest rules forbid contestants from using high pressure vessels, even if the cost of those catalysts wasn't so outrageous...."

"I-WILL-FIGURE-OUT-A-WAY-TO-DO-IT," said Liz through clenched teeth, looking directly at Max.

Mr. Raff had a very respectable IQ of 150. It would have let him squeak by as a Mensa applicant had he applied. For all of that, he was the third brightest person in the room. But there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. Simply put, the potential of intelligence must be leavened with experience before it becomes wisdom. Max, had he ever actually truthfully filled out an IQ test, rather than just sandbagging it, would have just edged out Liz for first place. But as intelligent as they were, neither was yet as wise as Mr. Raff. Neither - particularly Max - had been around long enough to make enough mistakes to acquire that experience. This afternoon, however, would be a learning experience for Max.

Mr. Raff had been married almost a year and had dated Mrs. Raff for three years before that. The clenched teeth repetition of a statement already made was something that he had encountered on three previous occasions - twice in the courtship of Mrs. Raff, and - worse yet - once after his marriage. He was now wise enough to understand that what this sequence of events meant was that the young lady was royally pissed. Perhaps he didn't understand exactly why, but such understanding was not necessary. Having made the mistake on three previous occasions the signs on this occasion were unmistakable. Liz Parker's brain had somehow shut down its cerebral hemispheres and she was now operating primarily on her midbrain - a structure controlling the 'fight or flight' reflex. What was worse, Liz showed no signs of getting ready to run.

Mr. Raff may not have been more intelligent than Max, but in this respect he was far wiser. The actions of Liz precisely paralleled those of Mrs. Raff - immediately before she would become a totally irrational but very angry young woman who would not revert to reason until copious apologies had been made by the offending male - in the preceding cases him but in this case - Mr Raff suspected - Max Evans. Mr. Raff was wise enough to know without any doubt whatsoever from painful personal experience that if Max didn't find another topic he was going to get an angry tearful tongue lashing, was going to wish he'd never been born, and was certainly not going to get any for a month - although he doubtless wasn't getting any anyway in Max's case.

"I'll tell you what,Liz," said Mr. Raff, in his most diplomatic voice, "Why don't you do some preliminary work, keeping in mind the safety rules of the science fair, and get back to me in a week or so. If you want to do that project, OK. If you decide you want to modify it, we can do that then."

'There,' he told himself, '... Liz is a reasonable and sensible girl. As long as we don't push her into a corner, she'll change the project as soon as she sees the danger in it.'

As he saw the satisfied smile come over Liz's face - and the not quite 'neener-neener' expression she tossed at Max, Mr. Raff actually thought he'd gotten away with defusing an immediately explosive situation as well as a more distant one. Alas, it was not to be.

Max couldn't believe his ears when he heard Mr. Raff give an OK for Liz to do the project. Was the man crazy? Or was it just that he couldn't see how dangerous those reactions were? Either way, he was practically greenlighting Liz commiting suicide, and as Max looked at Liz, the face that looked back at him told him she was actually going to do it. Her face seemed to swim in his vision as he imagined the result - Liz blown over half an acre.

"I absolutely forbid it!" said Max.

Mr. Raff had time to think. 'Oh my God....,' but that was about all before Liz exploded at the young man sitting next to her.

"You forbid it? YOU FORBID IT? YOU-FORBID-IT? WHERE THE HELL DO YOU GET OFF FORBIDDING ANYTHING, MAXWELL EVANS?"

"But, Liz..."

"Don't you 'but Liz,' me, Max Evans. You HAD your chance to be part of my life - you had your chance to be my lab partner - you even had your chance to work with me on this project. But NO - that wouldn't work because you are too damn different. You're right about that at least, Max. We are different - because YOU are a quitter, and I'm not. I am going to make this project work - I don't care what you think about it, and I don't need or want any help from you - in fact - you just keep away from me. I don't want to talk to you, I don't even want to SEE you," she screamed, the last punctuated by the sound of the door slamming behind her as she left.

Max sat there looking dazed.

"That," said Mr Raff, shaking his head and staring at the closed door, "...could have gone better....."

The Main Library of the Roswell Municipal Library system was on 3rd street, just a few blocks from Highway 285 which served as the main street of the town. It wasn't actually all that far from the Crashdown, but Liz said she'd be there doing research until the place closed, and that would be long after darkness, so she was dropping her daughter off at the library. She had some shopping to do, but wanted to go inside first to make sure that Liz would be allowed to use one of the reference computers. Liz had recently had trouble with one librarian over that - the woman hadn't allowed to Liz log on to that particular type of computer.

The main library had precisely twenty computers that were available to the public, sixteen with internet access, the other four with access only to the online card catalogue.

Six of the computers were in the adolescent section, available to patrons - like Liz - who were under eighteen years of age. They had software that protected the young patrons from access to online porn and similar inappropriate websites. There was usually quite a wait for any of these six computers - although that was mostly from legions of young teens who used them to play online video games.

Eight of the computers were in the 'adult' section, and - without special parental permission and release forms - younger patrons weren't allowed to use them at all. These computers were usually kept busy by by tourists and snow-birds checking their email, the small portion of the adult population of Roswell who had no other access to the Web, and a small number of unsavory people who came there to download porn.

That left the two computers in the reference section, and these were to be used only for reference. They had special licenses purchased by the library to allow the computers to be used to access a number of commercial online databases in science and medicine. The problem on the previous occasion was that the librarian had apparently assumed that Liz was trying to use a reference computer to get around the purposely constrained computers normally available for people of her age. So Jeff and Nancy had filled out some fairly detailed forms indicating that Liz did indeed need to use the reference computers to do research for her science fair project, AND they had signed all the release and permission forms to permit Liz to access the adult computers - apparently a new requirement someone had decided was needed for the reference computers since they did indeed allow unfiltered access to the Net. Before dropping her daughter off for three hours, Nancy wanted to make sure Liz would actually get the needed access.

As it turned out, it was uneventful. The librarian checked Liz's library card against a list, and told her to go log on to one of the computers. The reference area computers were seldom actually busy. In this case though, one was.

Just as Nancy noticed Diane Evans at the librarian's desk filling out the same forms she had filled out for Liz, she noticed Max Evans - already sitting at the terminal of one of the two computers.

As Liz went to the reference area she saw the computers and hesitated half a step, realizing who was going to be sitting beside her. But there was no real helping it, she decided. There were only the two reference computers.

'But I DO NOT,' she told herself, 'even have to look at him.'

As she sat down next to him and logged on - studiously avoiding making eye contact - she felt the start of the old sense of comfort - the familiarity and warmth - that she had always felt when they worked together. Then she remembered - Max had thrown all that away.

'I am NOT going to feel like this,' she told herself. 'He's NOT my friend - not anymore.'

Within minutes she was deeply involved in articles about condensation of terpenoids. It didn't seem to help. Every damn article involved expensive catalysts and high pressure vessels. She could almost hear Max saying , 'Neener-neener, I told you so,' in her mind. She fought back her anger and dug deeper in to the research, trying to lose herself in the process of science. Maybe then she wouldn't have to daydream about her and Max. That was simply too painful. She threw herself deeper in to the research, doing her best to convince her mind that Max wasn't right next to her - in fact - that he didn't exist at all.


As Liz sat down, Max briefly felt the old sense of comfort - the familiarity and warmth he had always felt when they worked together. But the memory came back, and that sense of comfort turned in to just a painful remembrance of what had happened between them. He thought about getting up, but this was the only computer he could use for the research except for the one she was already using. He shouldn't have thought that - it instantly created an image of the two of them sitting side by side - their shoulders almost touching - as one worked the keyboard while they both looked at the screen.

'This is for the best,' he told himself. 'You are doing it for Liz, so she can find her special someone - someone normal.'

The thought seemed to give him resolve. He was doing the right thing, he knew, even if she hated him for it. Even so, it hurt just too much to look at her. He started punching keys - doing his research. Anything to get his mind off what he'd lost.


Sixty feet away, behind the backs of the two young teens at the Reference Desk computers, two women were standing and watching.

"Have you ever in your life," asked Nancy, ..."seen two people so desperately trying to pretend that the other one doesn't exist?"

"I really don't believe so," replied Diane.

"Do you have a half-hour or so, Diane? I'd like to sit somewhere and have a cup of coffee with you and try to figure out just WHAT is going on with those two - and what - if anything - we should do about it."

"I think that would be an excellent idea, personally," replied Diane Evans.

It was a small coffee shop on the east side of town -and the two women sat in the back booth nursing cups of tea they really didn't want and talking about a problem they really didn't know how to solve.

"You know, I don't think I was ready yet for a teenage daughter," said Nancy. "I mean - the angst and depression - the fits of temper - and of course, that's just me. Liz is even worse, and this funk of hers is just absolutely driving me up the walls."

Diane chuckled but her smile was weak as she nodded her head. "I know exactly what you mean. Dammit, things were going so well with Max too. I don't know if I ever told you the story but - well, Dr James Marquardt was the deputy director of the State Child Welfare Services back when Max and Izzy were about six - just after we'd decided to adopt them. He drove down here to Roswell to talk to me about the kids - not to discourage us really - but just to sort of let us know what we were getting in to."

"Getting in to...?"

"Yeah. Max and Izzy weren't just orphans or unwanted - they were foundlings. What's more, they were what Dr. Marquardt called feral children."

"I knew they were behind in their studies and that was why you homeschooled them, but what do you mean by 'feral'?"

"It was like they hadn't even been raised by humans - like those kids you read about in the 'Believe it or not' books that were raised by wolves or something. Max and Izzy didn't speak- not just English, they didn't speak any language. They had no clue about the alphabet - heck they weren't even housebroken," Diane said shaking her head. "It didn't matter to me of course - God I loved those little tikes - but Dr Marquardt warned me - warned me that they might never be normal. That terrified me."

"I shouldn't wonder, but Diane, they seem normal enough."

"Isabel came around fairly quickly, Nancy. She's certainly not a perfect kid - and that gang of girls she is running with right now..."

"The Ice Princess Posse? Liz and Maria have talked about them sometimes."

"That's the one. Isabel seems - normal - at least as normal as any members of that clique - but I really wonder if that's not just a false front - a way for it to look like she is cold and arrogant so she can appear to participate while still keeping the rest of humanity at a distance. Even so, she could at least pass for normal. Max couldn't - not now, not ever. Actually Nancy, up until the day I took him in to register for school I really didn't think that Max would ever really be capable of considering himself part of society, and then it happened. There was Liz and that big ugly dog - and Liz was important to him - important enough that he actually would participate in the world rather than trying to keep himself distanced from it."

"God, I'll always remember that day - I thought I'd lost her. I thought I was going to see my only child torn apart right before my eyes - then Max was there and - I swear even the dog could see it in his body language. To get to Liz you were going to have to go through little Max, and Max wasn't going to back down no matter what. I still get goosebumps thinking about that day. I'm so grateful for him being there."

"Whatever happened, I can tell you it was as much a life saver for Max as it was for Liz. For the first time in his life he really wanted to interact with someone who wasn't part of our family - and Liz - O God she was so sweet to him, staying in with him for recess - helping him socialize - encouraging him to meet people. Somehow she was able to do something I never could do - give him a reason to be part of the human race. There were times - I thin - that I almost resented your daughter. She could get him to talk to people - do things socially, that I never could. It was like I was an inadequate parent or something..."

"You want to feel like an inadequate parent? Just watch someone kidnap your child in front of your very eyes. Jim Valenti showed me the rap sheet on that guy after it was all over - I still have nightmares about it. But I really didn't need to see that list to know what he intended for Liz. You could tell ... just by the way he grabbed her. I swear to God, I was sure I'd never see her again - could only imagine the terror she was going through - and the horror she would soon be facing. And then comes Max - riding his bicycle down an impossibly steep slope and stopping that man the only way he could be stopped."

"And now they aren't even speaking to one another..."

"You're the lawyer, Diane. Would it be legal to arrange a shotgun marriage for the two of them – then tell them they’re stuck with each other and they’ll just have to make the best of it?” asked Nancy, it seemed to Diane only half jokingly.

“I am afraid so and I definitely don’t think they are ready for that – I know I’m not – but I understand the sentiment.”

“It’s really weird – you know? Most mothers of teenage girls are scared to death about what might happen when their daughter is out with a boy. I’m almost frightened to let her out the door without him.”

“Yeah, well without her to go see Max barely goes out at all – just sits in his room and listens to the most depressing damn CDs you ever heard – something about crows.”

“I know, we’ve got to give them time to work this through, but they both seem miserable, and Liz is becoming a real pain in the tush to be around.”

“Max just mopes. I’m really kind of worried about him. Jim Valenti found him out on a cliff one day – just sort of leaning forward into the wind. He wound up being checked out by someone from the state – they were afraid he might be suicidal.”

“Oh my God, Diane…”

“Oh, they said they thought he was OK, but in its own way that sort of scares me. Max really has never been OK – except when he’s been with Liz. If Max looks OK any other time – well – that’s just Max – pretending to be OK.”

“Maybe if I told Liz…”

“Goodness, no, don’t do that. Don’t you remember when you were a teenager. If there was any inkling that your parents ever approved of your boyfriend, you dropped him like yesterday’s garbage. No, if they are going to patch this up, it’s going to have to be the two of them that do it. It’s just so hard to hear Max crying out in his sleep for Liz…”

”He does that?”

“I woke him up and talked to him. He said he was having a dream – something about Liz and her science fair project. He said he dreamed she used too much pressure or the wrong catalyst and wound up blowing herself up, and he wasn’t there to stop her…”

“I thought the permission paper I signed said that they couldn’t have projects that involved dangerous pressures or that might be explosive.”

“I remember that too, but Max is such a worrier – at least when it comes to Liz. He's probably just nervous.”

“Well, not without reason, if past history is any indication. I may just have to remind her of the rules – just to be sure.”



It was almost an hour later when Nancy picked Liz up at the library.

“How is the project going?”

“I’m having some problems. It looks like I need to find a really good catalyst to make the reaction go. Even if I kick the pressure up, the one I was thinking about using won’t work.”

“Mrs. Evans told me that Max is concerned about your project – concerned it might be dangerous. I want your promise that you aren’t going to do anything dangerous – do you understand.”

“I understand, Mom,” Liz said with obvious irritation. ‘I understand that Max wants to keep me from winning that science fair so much he’ll even use his own mother to work on my mother to stop me from beating him,’ she thought. ‘What did I ever see in him anyway? Well, he won’t stop me. I’m still going to beat him.’

The scene was Joe’s Junkyard – a half mile outside of town. The pressure vessel was an old commercial pressure cooker that had at one time served the Crashdown. The catalysts were finely divided Rhodium, Platinum, and Palladium – salvaged from the catalytic converters from two smashed hulks from that same junk yard – hulks that had once been that been automobiles until their drivers had one – or several – too many ‘for the road.’

She had already laboriously distilled the terpenoids from the agave – at a huge cost in energy for a process to make an alternate fuel that was intended to be a net gain in energy – because she was trying to just take one step at a time. This was the conversion of Agave terpenoids to isoprene and decane – which together could easily fuel an automobile engine – if the conversion could be stopped there. The problem was that the process was indeed exothermic. The problem was to make the terpenoids break down and condense without allowing the energy being released to heat it up to the point that the fuel that was created itself went on to explode.

The fact was that no one anywhere had ever figured out this problem, but that didn’t deter Liz. She simply had to keep trying. The way to do it, she decided, was to increase the pressure in the pressure cooker still more – to about three atmospheres – only about two hundred percent of design pressure for it – but to pressurize it with Nitrogen which would not support combustion. She was running the Nitrogen into the pressure vessel through a hundred foot length of salvaged water pipe while heating the pressure cooker gently with a small electric heat plate courtesy of electricity borrowed from Joe, through a two hundred foot extension cord . She figured the hundred foot distance was safe enough – even with the overpressure in the pressure cooker – and it would have been too, had not the additional nitrogen squeezing in to the vessel caused the contents to heat by compression. This heat of compression brought in to play something called Gay-Lussac’s law driving pressure in the vessel up rapidly and producing catastrophic failure.

Liz ducked behind the dash of the long ago junked Studebaker as the shrapnel that had once been a pressure cooker pinged off the metal auto body and put several impressive star fractures in the safety. A hundred feet away – nothing was left but an extension cord and nitrogen filled water pipe – leading to a shallow crater in the desert. Liz shook her head in frustration. Another failure – this one a spectacular one that set her back to square one. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.

The patrol car stopped about ten feet from the old Studebaker and Jim Valenti got out.

“Either real late or incredibly early to be celebrating the Fourth of July, isn’t it Miss Parker? Those don't exactly seem to be safe and sane fireworks, either. Now I’m sitting here debating with myself who I should call about this – your parents, or the BATF. If that wasn’t an illegal explosive device, it was darn close. Would you be interested in telling me just exactly what you think you are doing?”

Later at the Parker Residence.

"I'm terribly sorry, Deputy Valenti," said Nancy.

Jim Valenti just shook his head and chuckled. He had escorted Liz home - the patrol car blinkers on all the way, as she'd ridden her bicycle through town to the Crashdown. That alone had embarrassed Liz enough to make her always remember this day. Then she'd had to explain to her parents just what she'd been doing - and the result. Jim had let her go with a warning - she was now up in her bedroom humiliated and sulking - having promised her parents on penalty of being barred from the science fair that she would do nothing - NOTHING - involving pressure vessels.

"Hey, I have a young teen of my own," replied Jim. "Except he wouldn't have been distilling the - what did she call them - terpenoids? - from the agave mash. Kyle would have gone right for the tequila. Then I'd be the one explaining to the ATF why my kid was making illicit hooch. In all fairness, she didn't hurt anything. It's just that kids at this age think they are immortal. If a large piece of that pressure cooker had headed for that old Studebaker a sixty year- old safety windshield would not have been enough protection - not nearly enough."

"Well thank you for intervening anyway, Jim."

"Hey, by the time I got involved, the fireworks were all over. Just as long as she doesn't do it again. I was rather surprised though - I would have thought her cohort in crime would have been there to stand between her and her home-made bomb."

"Max? They appear to be on the outs...."

"Ah yes, the teen years - I remember them well. When you let her come down tell her that I'll not put in any official report - this time - but it really can't happen again."

"There won't be a second time, Deputy Valenti. That I can assure you."

Liz listened from her doorway at the top of the stairs - then quietly closed the door and lay down on her stomach on the bed.

'Men .... they thought they knew everything. She'd show them - Deputy Valenti, Mr. Raff, .... and most of all she'd show Max.'

She looked at the jewelry box that contained the friendship pendant, opened it and took the pendant out wondering why she just didn't throw it away for real. She sighed and put it back in the box - placing the box back in the top drawer of her dresser. Then she went to her desk to start all over again - thinking up some non-explosive way to make Agave terpenoids into fuel.

Liz Parker didn't give up easily. Not with her science projects - and her heart didn't give up easily either - not with Max.

It was lunch hour four days later - and time for a progress report on the science fair projects. The place was Mr. Raff's room, and present were Mr. Raff and his wife and, of course, the two students who had presentations to make.

"So far I've constructed a wind tunnel to test my wind turbine models. I got one ot the - the kind they use as a molf for pouring concrete columns in construction work. I put it on its side in our garage and found the biggest fan that I could get to push air through it. It works -sort of. I made my first model wind turbine abou one-twentieth scale - and put it in the tube. I have a small DC generator to attach to the turbine blades so I can tell how much power each produces. So far I just have sort of everyday sample turbine blade - nothing special. I haven't started experimenting with different designs. Right now I'm having some problems. The total amount of power produce is pretty tiny, and somehow I'm going to have to increase the velocity of airflow to compensate. But already sometimes the generator speeds up and slows down in a funny ort of a rhythm - like a sine wave almost. I think maybe the little turbine blade is getting some sort of resonance with the fan blade...," said Max.

Mr. Raff looked at the diagrams Max had drawn of what he was doing. "I think you are right on the resonance Max, but it may even be worse than that. With everything cylindrical, it's likely the air flow down the cardboard tube is actually twisting itself, as well as beeing somewhat pulsatile. When it happens to his the model turbine just right, it spins real fast - at other times, it spins slowly. There is a good [url=http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/WindTunnel/build.html]NASA website on buliding model wind tunnels. You ought to look there - but I think you'll find that if you put a grid in front of your fan it will force the airflow to be more laminar, while the interference pattern from the air flowing through the different grids will cause the overall airflow to be much closer to a laminar flow.

You are right as well about having to increase the wind velocity. The problem with models is one of scale, especially when you talk about your turbine designs which are bascally small wings. Although your size may be one-twentieth of what yu are trying to design, the surface area for the wing you are having the air push upon is the square of that - one- fourhundredth of the surface area that you are modeling. That makes it necessary to use a much faster scale wind velocity.

But I have to admit, you've made a pretty good start, Max.

How about you< Liz? How is your project going?"

"Well - I distilled the terpenoids off from the fermented agave. The energy requirement of that was - well, a lot higher than I'd hoped. I salvaged some catalysts - rhodium, platinum, and palladium gauze, from a couple of ole catalytic convertors and tried to get the terpenods to condense. It didn't do it initially, so I tried just a little heat in a Nitrogen atmosphere. I - uh - didn't get exactly the yield I was expecting."

Because he had the ability to manipulate molecules, Max posssessed a near-intuitive understanding of the energy requirement and energy yield of what Liz was talking about, and his eyes grew wide with fear.

"You're lucky that it didn't blow up in your face," Max muttered under his breath, loud enough unfortunately that Liz heard him, even if Mr. Raff didn't. Nonetheless, Mr. Raff knew enough organic chemistry to have an intuitive feel of his own - that there was no safe way to do what Liz was trying.

"I'm still concerned that what you have picked may be just a little bit too difficult for someone at your level, Liz," said Mr. Raff. "Max seems to have a project that is big enough for two to work on - and he could use the help. Why don't you partner up on it and do it as a joint project," he continued with a pleasant smile.

"Max doesn't want to work with me any more< Mr. Raff," said Liz. "That was obvious when he decided not to work in the quarry this summer, and besides ... I really don't care to work with him either. We are 'too different' I believe the expression was."

Mr. Raff saw Max wince at the words, and was about to rebuke Liz when he noticed his own wife looking at him and slowly shaking her head. They hadn't been married long, but they'd been married long enough that Mr. Raff knew that look. Somehow, this was one of those - female things. Somehow Max had said or done something wrong, and until the young man was bright enough to figure out what that was and apologize profusely, there was no resolving this situation. Mrs. Raff - who Mr. Raff sometimes called She-Who-Must-Be -Obeyed - and that only half jokingly - was giving him all the non verbal clues he needed to butt out. Not being a total idiot, he changed the subject.

"Uh... next project report is in two weeks. I want preliminary drafts of your experimental plan."

As Max watched her walk away, his heart seemed to crumple within him. He had wanted her to be happy - and he still did. But he missed being her friend. Silently he turned and went back to his locker. he needed to go home - he had a lot of work to do on his wind tunnel.

It was 12:20 in the afternoon, two weeks later, and She-who-must-not-be named, AKA Mrs. Raff, Had enjoyed a quick lunch with her husband and was now waiting with him for the two students to show up to give their latest progress reports on their science fair projects.

“It’s your own fault, dear. That policy of both lab partners getting the same lab grade – that’s what got you in this fix.”

Mr. Raff had fully come to realize that. Nonetheless, there were appearances that must be kept up in any relationship – even the husband-wife relationship.

“Well, it’s never been a problem before – but I have to admit there is something wrong when ‘the Perfect Miss Parker’ is struggling to avoid getting a “B’ and losing her 4.0 average because of a science course. Now Driver’s Ed – that I could believe. The girl has always been somewhat of a disaster magnet, but academics – and particularly in science? I suppose you are right. But unfortunately it’s nothing I can change for this semester.”

“I sort of expect that your lab partners have always been more evenly matched in the past – academically and motivationally. In this case I have no doubt Pamela Troy is overjoyed just to pass – and most of that likely because she IS Liz’s lab partner. The fact that she can be academically eligible for cheerleading is all she really cares about. I wouldn’t think that girl has any reasonable expectation of getting an academic scholarship no matter what she does.”

“Well if Liz had just chosen Max – I remember Max certainly looked willing. In fact, he looked kind of crushed when she chose Pam. His project is coming along well – I ought to just tell Liz to forget hers, and partner with him on his.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, dear.”

“But I don’t want to be the one who breaks her 4.0 average.”

“She’s in the seventh grade, dear. So she takes a 3.94 junior high GPA to high school in a few years. So what? She’ll probably be in the top three or four no matter what she does in your class.”

“But you are right – a bout the way I grade lab partners. She deserves better.”

“Junior high school isn’t just about academics. It’s also about growing up. Liz and Max both need to do that and maybe this will help.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that whatever the personal problem is between those two, it’s more important than any academic one. They need to work this one out themselves, and you need to leth them do it. That’s what I mean…”

Ten minutes later Max was finishing his presentation:

“So, with the bigger fan I borrowed from our neighbor on the front end – near the new vanes – and the old fan pushing air rather than pulling it out the back end of the plenum – well I got the flow I need for my testing without the previous turbulence. All I really had to do was put in a 220 volt circuit in the garage for the bigger fan – but Dad wanted one of those anyway. He’s hoping mom will get him a big air compressor for Christmas.”

“I’m not just too sure you should have been working with a 220 volt circuit, Max. Those can be real dangerous when you don’t know what you are doing.,” said Mr. Raff.

Max sighed. “I researched it pretty well, Mr. Raff, and got an electrical permit. The electrical inspector checked it over before it was ever energized – and it works just fine.”

“Very well, then. It sounds like your project is going about as well as could be expected at this point, Max. Liz, how is your project going?”

Liz looked at Mr. Raff, doing a slow burn. He hadn’t had to gush over Max like that. “Well, I’ve been doing mostly library research – looking for a different catalyst – one that won’t require the pressure or heat that the platinum and rhodium and palladium did… No luck so far.”

Mr. Raff really wanted to tell Liz to just give it up – that she ought to team with Max – but a warning glance from his wife was enough to convince him not to say that.

“Well, Liz, …. I’m sure you will think of something, but it better not take too long. The regional science fair is only six weeks away.”

It was six weeks later in Clovis New Mexico and a very nervous Liz Parker was waiting for the start of the phase III judging of the science fair projects. The fact that she was actually AT phase III was pretty encouraging.

There were 160 entrants, and the Phase I judging had culled those down to 32. Phase I judging was based upon their experimental journals and the project write-up that each contestant had done. Those had been mailed off to the judges a week ago and reviewed by them for scientific rigor – as well as neatness, how interesting the topic was, and anything else that might appeal to the judge. She had been notified on arrival that her project had been selected for Phase II, meaning that it would at least get an honorable mention. Unfortunately, so had Max’s project.

Phase II had happened this morning, when a group of judges had come by to look at their displays and to discuss their projects with them. All the Phase II projects had been scored with the top quarter – eight projects – being selected for this evenings Phase III judging. She had made the cut – unfortunately so had Max. She needed to be in the top three to pull out her “A,” in science class, and Max was providing stiff – and perhaps unfair – competition.

Unfair because Phase III involved the contestants giving a presentation in a forum with three judges – and the other Phase III competitors – listening to and critiquing their projects. Unfair because Max – she was pretty sure – had seen and even made a copy of her journals and write-up when Mr. Raff had asked him to send the paperwork off to Clovis a week ago. That gave Max a week to study her project – to think up every difficult question he could that she would have to defend against at the presentation. No, it wasn’t fair, but she couldn’t prove he’d made the copies either – it was just that the copy machine he had used had shown that extra copies were made of something. That something, though, had the same number of pages in it as her project.

‘Of course,’ she thought to herself, ‘…Max is rather terrible at public speaking – maybe that’ll make it even out.’

For a moment she felt ashamed about that thought – she’d worked for years trying to give him those social skills he did possess – now she was rejoicing about him being somewhat socially inept – but the moment passed.

No, Max was trying to submarine her – trying to ruin her GPA for no good reason – he’d get his ‘A’ no matter how he did here. He deserved to be embarrassed up there in front of everyone. If she could find any flaw in his project she wouldn’t hesitate to point it out. Sometimes it seemed like science fairs were a dog-eat-dog world. It was survival of the fittest and to the victor – or at least to whoever got in the top three – would go enough points to get her ‘A’ in science class. Liz intended to be in the top three – even if that meant walking all over Max to do so. He certainly deserved it.

In point of fact, she did have to give Max a little bit of the credit for her getting this far. Max telling her that what she was doing wouldn’t work had made her even more determined. But in the end, he was right – what she had been doing would not have worked.

Six weeks ago she sat down in frustrated tears and admitted to herself that – whatever else Max was – he did know chemistry and physics. He had some sort of an intuitive skill – like he just knew how molecules would act if you tried to manipulate them. Chemistry, physics, and – word problems – those things Max really could do better than her. It was then that she decided to stop playing Max’s game – a game he’d already told her she couldn’t win – and to play to her own strength. That was biology.

It began with a week of reading everything she could get her hands on about Agave – the source stock for the terpenoids – and for tequila and mezcal. It was on the seventh day – and 47th book – that she saw the warning – an old distiller saying that if the distillate tasted like gasoline, then you probably had mold in the mash. The mold involved was one that was known to sometimes devastate Agave fields. It was called Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. pisi.

Liz had gone to the Agave fields – the diseased ones – and gotten a specimen of the mold. The mold grew easily in culture on most any media and – as she discovered – if you put in Agave terpenoids at a certain critical time in its development, the Fusarium produced an enzyme that would convert terpenoids to terpenes – and condense them into decane and nonane. Enzymes were biological catalysts, doing what the platinum and palladium did at normal temperatures and pressures – and doing it much better. What was great was that you didn’t have to go to the effort of separating the terpenoids – you could use the spent mash that had already had the tequila distilled from it. This was normally fed to pigs – terpenoids and all, but it turned out the pigs liked it even better – and were healthier – if you first got the terpenoids out. Best yet was that the terpenes and decane and nonane were poorly soluble in water. They floated to the top and could be decanted or skimmed off easily.

For her display, Liz had used a leaf-blower motor fueled with her own terpenoid derived fuel to demonstrate how effective the process was. That display – and the writeup that Max had copied – had gotten her this far. If she could just do well in the oral presentation….

three presentations had already been given – Liz was privately convinced her project was better than either of those – and they were now calling the name of the fourth of the Phase III presentations. They were going alphabetically – the last presentation had been by Jim Farnsworth – so it hardly surprised Liz when she heard the announcer intone, “Next presentation, Max Evans….”

As he strode up to the podium Liz got a determined look on her face. Max was trying to make it difficult for her to score in the top three – there could be no other reason that he would have taken a copy of her journal and project for himself. Well turnabout was fair play. ‘Maybe,’ she thought with an evil smile, ‘...you and I aren’t all that different after all, Mr. Max Evans…’

Even before the first word of his presentation, she was thinking of all the thinks he had once said about wind power – how it really wasn’t all that practical. All she had to do was to throw that back at him and Max would undoubtedly get flustered and confused. Then there would only be six other people competing for those top three positions.

Doctor Peter Bradley considered himself the leading environmentalist in Clovis New Mexico - but he hadn't really expected to be a judge at a regional science fair.

It probably shouldn't have surprised him - he contributed funds to every environmental cause in most of the nation - particularly here in Clovis, where he had chosen to someday retire. He'd chosen Clovis because the place was near ideal for both solar and wind energy - the desert Southwest being perhaps the premier place in the nation for solar energy, while the high plains of eastern New Mexico were famous for their frequent - some would say constant - high winds. He had already started living there - at least on weekends - while commuting weekly back and forth to where he worked.

His Clovis house was about twenty miles west of town - off-grid - in a modest little 17000 sq ft Adobe house (insulated with straw bales) with a rather expansive seven car garage. Power was supplied by four wind turbines as well as an almost three acre bank of solar cells. He liked to boast that he had the smallest carbon footprint in town - and he probably did if you didn't count the Citation business jet that operated off the 7000 foot concrete runway he had built beside his house.

The jet itself did use fossil fuel - but this was offset - as he explained to everyone who was interested and many who were not - by carbon credits purchased from a Brazilian government certified landowner who was deeding tropical rainforest to be preserved in perpetuity in its pristine natural state rather than selling it off to builders for his purchase of carbon credits.

The runway was concrete rather than less expensive asphalt because the asphalt was hydrocarbon based whereas concrete was just sand and gravel - certainly in no scarce supply in eastern New Mexico.

Doctor Bradley was unaware that the quicklime that made his concrete was made by roasting limestone in furnaces heated by natural gas and that the 'carbon-footprint' of the concrete was actually considerably more than what it would have been had it been asphalt. He was also unaware that the land in Brazil was actually a swamp that had no potential for commercial development whatsoever - or that the Brazilian consortium from whom he bought his carbon credits sold credits for the same measly parcel of swampland to dozens of other gullible Norte Americano environmentalists - or that a corrupt Brazilian government took a 20% cut for certifying these bogus deals.

The jet aircraft he used once - or perhaps twice - weekly, to be flown back to southern California where he had made his fortune in the movie industry.

His Doctorate, you see, was an honorary one, something he didn't discuss much actually - and in the Arts, rather than Science - the result of decades of rather lavish contributions to the USC Center for the Performing Arts. He'd actually attended USC once, for almost a year before becoming a movie actor. Doctor Bradley - well, just Peter Bradley then - had actually been in four films, and the first two even he would admit were terrible. He'd had only bit parts in either of them. His first film in which he starred had been a modest success by film standards - it had earned back its production costs before DVD sales - and his second one had been marginally better. But then he'd found his real niche - producing and directing.

Peter Bradley had always somehow had a knack for handling the temperamental egos of his costars and that let him get the best performances possible from them. That had translated - early in his career - to a number of movie successes that had led to a rather considerable fortune - a fortune he had invested in what turned out to be the most lucrative part of the motion picture industry - pay per view x-rated movies for the hotel industry.

Oh, Peter didn't actually direct those. They were cranked out by the dozens in small studios out in the San Fernando Valley. He just had a monetary interest as a silent partner. Every time a lonely businessman in some hotel watched a smutty movie, Bradley made about thirty-five cents. He was a very wealthy man.

No, now Peter mainly produced and directed 'artistic' films - the films that won all the awards given by the critics - and supported all the politically correct causes. They didn't make a great deal of money - that really wasn't the point - but being in a Peter Bradley film was now a rite of passage for all the up and coming Hollywood talent. He was wealthy and powerful - even if he knew next to nothing about science.

One thing 'Doctor' Bradley did know about was electric powered sports cars - they were his passion. He had four of them at his modest 400 acre ranch in Clovis - two more in California where he kept one in the Citation's hangar at the Burbank airport to swap out with the one on the charger out in the San Fernando Valley.

The sports car was advertised to have a 200 mile range between charges - and that was probably true if you drove it at the recommended 35 mph, although it's doubtful that anyone who was not a company test drive had actually done that. You don't buy a $109,000 sports car (including the $7500 federal tax credit) that can do over 200 MPH if you take off the governor - that can do a quarter mile in less than 13 seconds - to cruise around at 35 miles per hour after all. That's why he had two in California alone - one would practically empty itself on the 50 mile round-trip to the San Fernando Valley from Burbank. But at least having two was enough in California. It wasn't in Eastern New Mexico.

The fact is that if you were to look up 'wide open spaces' in the encyclopedia, you'd probably see a picture of eastern New Mexico. At his Clovis ranch, all the governors were disarmed on his fleet of sports cars and their maximum speed range of 50 miles went by in about fourteen minutes. That was seven minutes out and seven minutes back which got 'Doctor' Bradley off the ranch certainly, but after that the thing needed to recharge for six hours normally - twelve hours on his wind turbines which didn't actually generate all that much energy.

Now the three acres of solar cells actually DID generate a lot of energy, but it was direct current energy - not the alternating current that the small sports cars were designed to use for their charging. In fact the good doctor COULD have used an inverter to convert his ample DC power into an AC current by means of something called an inverter. He didn't do that because one of his sound equipment men - decades ago - had burned out an amplifier and ruined a day's camera shooting by using an inverter. Of course, that was in the days when cameras had used vacuum tubes and inverters had all been square wave inverters and the precision electronics of the day didn't have the capacitance to handle the resulting voltage spikes. That wouldn't have applied to his sports cars in any event - the capacitance of their 6,831 lithium ion batteries (each) was just short of phenomenal - but the good doctor didn't know that although most of the kids exhibiting today could have perhaps explained it to him - certainly Liz or Max could have.

Now in all fairness, it couldn't be said that 'Doctor' Bradley was a bad man - he just made the somewhat arrogant assumption that because he was rich and successful in one field he was knowledgeable in all. In fact, what actual science he knew - divorced from political correctness - probably wouldn't have tested anyone else in the room. Nonetheless, when one judge - Mr Raff - backed out because of the conflict of interest of having two of the eight finalists - totally unexpected since he was only a junior high school science teacher - Bradley had agreed with some of the locals - who believed that his degree was actually in science - to step up to the plate, so to speak. The sad thing was he actually thought he could do a good job. It was a case of him - like them - actually not understanding how little he knew.

Although Peter Bradley had seen most of the displays there were two entrants that had attracted a disproportionate share of his attention. The first was an entry involving improved efficiency for wind turbine blades - an idea he thought whose time had definitely come. To him the application seemed immediate and reasonable. The second was the display by someone that many in the exhibition area were describing as a wunderkind - the 'perfect Miss Parker' whose project was about getting more fuel for gasoline engines - who had even started one of the obnoxious things in the display hall. Peter didn't like gasoline engines - and saw little reason anyone would want to encourage their use.

This set the stage for what occurred next.