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Good Morning, T-C,

I finished my short story...

Tabula Rasa

Rodney Canfield, Ph.D., had always been puzzled by a phenomenon he had witnessed many times, beautiful fat flakes of snow falling on a day when it seemed too warm to last. Normally it didn’t.

So then why did it form in the first place? Oh, he had heard all the glib explanations about micro-climates, warm fronts, and temperature inversions. He knew they were all just, forgive the expression, “blowing hot air.”

The truth was, nobody could explain it.

That’s why he was so excited to get the grant which would enable him to do his research!

“Tina! We got it! I got the research grant! This should fund me for more than a year!” He was unable to contain his enthusiasm, bursting through the door with his voice at top volume.

Tina leaned out of the bathroom door with an artfully draped towel and smiled. “There is some wine we can open for the occasion!” She suggested.

Their celebration was a merry one, and many of their friends heard the good news and wished them both luck.
***

Six months later, Rodney thought they had run out of it. They had relocated to a staff cottage at Granite Peak Ski Resort. Rodney had studied everything that even remotely pertained to the phenomenon, and had even taken seasonal employment with the crew who operated the “snow-making” equipment, but he was no closer to solving the riddle.

He slumped in a chair with the latest print-outs at his feet. “I don’t get it, Tina. I know there’s something going on. We’ve even seen this effect happen right here since we moved in. But I still haven’t come up with an explanation, or even a direction to investigate!”

Tina brought him another coffee, with the frothy topping he enjoyed. “You remember when I suggested that you look into aerogels?”

He looked up. “Thanks. Yeah, I remember. You know they are worlds apart. I explained it to you.”

“Sure. But I still keep coming back to it. Suppose you had a snowflake-shaped aerogel? Like, a whole bunch of them.”

Rodney sipped the coffee cautiously. He closed his eyes and leaned back, visualizing the concept. “Okay.”

“They would float down just as light as snowflakes, wouldn’t they? Maybe even lighter!”

“All right. I’ve got the picture. Very pretty.” He opened his eyes again. “What’s your point?”

“Simple. All you have to do is make a snowflake that thinks it’s an aerogel!”

Rodney smiled, and leaned forward to kiss her. Bless her heart, she was trying to keep him cheered up, at least.

He smiled as she walked back into the tiny kitchen. “Yeah, that would be a good trick.” He thought.

But afterwards, he began dwelling on the notion. Aerogels were simple solutions in which removing the water left the shadow of the material that was dissolved in it. The bones of a liquid solution. Rodney smiled again.

“Sure! All I have to do is make snowflakes out of dehydrated water, and I’m all set!” He thought wryly to himself.

Still, maybe there was something ...

***

“Look at the sequence, Tina! See how the air currents swirl around the artificial snowflake? This behavior is identical to what happens in the real world, with real snowflakes. That’s what makes them last while falling through the warmer air! They’re carrying a little parachute of colder air with them. It’s the opposite of bubbles rising in a liquid, it’s a bubble of cold air falling through warmer air, with a snowflake at its center. That’s what gives it its temperature stability!”

“I get it! The snowflake parachutes down, and remains stable until it touches the ground, and its cold-air bubble pops!”

Rodney looked thoughtful. “Yeah, that’s it. I wonder if there’s a way to make it not pop?”

Canfield knew that water could be super-cooled, brought to a temperature well below freezing, without its solidifying. Was there a mechanism to reverse this? Could crystals of water be “super-warmed” without breaking down the crystalline structure? It seemed to depend on the filamentous edges of the crystal. If there were a way to prevent their touching things or absorbing heat ...

***

“Tina! Come outside! Oh, and bring your jacket!”

“What’ve you got?” She was zipping up her jacket, and shaking the hair out of her eyes.

“How warm do you thing it is right here?” Rodney asked.

She looked around, smelling and sensing the air. “I’d guess low to mid fifties, why?”

“Look at this!” He poured some white flakes out of an insulated flexible carry-bag onto the patio table. There in the shade, he knew the table would be at the ambient air temperature.

The pile of flakes sat unceremoniously on the table, doing nothing.

“Now, for comparison ...” He picked another, similar bag and dumped its contents in a similar pile. Tina recognized it as the kind of artificial snow that was made up on the mountain, by using water and liquid nitrogen.

They watched the two piles.

Slowly, it became apparent that the “nitrogen” snow was melting at the edges, forming a dark wet ring on the table surface. The other pile remained unchanged. Tina picked up a small quantity of it in her bare hand.

At first, it felt like feathers, or flour, neither cold nor hot. Suddenly, almost instantly, it melted. Her hand was wet. She sniffed it, then wiped it on her pantleg. She looked up at Rodney.

“It’s a new kind of artificial snow, Tina! Warm snow! I’ve done it!” He grabbed her and picked her up in an excited bearhug.

“How? I thought you were stuck?”

“I finally realized that the whole secret to it was the somewhat random shapes that occur on the ends of snowflakes. There is a specific configuration which harnesses all the forces to create the features I wanted; static electricity, air-entraining, even a minor “ground-effect” which isolates the crystal. It occurs in nature, too, but much too rarely.”

She stared again at the pile of crystalline water. “Are you saying these flakes are somehow ... clones of each other?”

Canfield laughed. “Yes! That’s one way to describe it. I’ve discovered, and developed, a chemical agent which causes something like an enzymatic reaction when the crystals are forming. It’s like a bakery, and my chemical is the bread pan. The flakes form in the shape I want, and then the pan is emptied, and a new crystal starts forming.”

He looked up at the mountain. “Just a few ounces can catalyze tons of this new snow. It’s just a fraction of the cost of the liquid nitrogen. With my patented chemical, ski resorts like this one will be able to make snow for months longer in the season than before, and still save money. We’re going to be rich!”

“Patented? I thought the results of your study belonged to the granting authority.”

“Yes, yes. The study. The results of the study of snow crystals and their formation, and what causes them to be unnaturally extended sometimes. But that’s just information. The chemical used to catalyze the process is an invention. A man-made catalyst similar to some refrigerants. We’re going to sell tons of it, at fabulous profits!”

Tina finally accepted the possibility, and became as excited as he. They danced clumsily together in childlike merriment.

***

Nine years later, Rodney was staring out a huge expanse of insulated glass at a postcard-beautiful Wintry scene. He held a glass of sherry in his hand, sipping occasionally. He sighed.

Tina came to stand beside him. “You didn’t know, Rodney. You couldn’t have known.”

He put his arm around her and pulled her close. She had been there with him through it all; The triumph, and the tragedy.

“No, I didn’t know. But I could have proceeded more slowly. It didn’t have to go this far.” Sighing again, he led her back to sit at the couch and look out at the landscape of luminous alabaster. They had nowhere to go, and no reason to leave.

“When I started, we couldn’t keep up with demand. Ski resorts, movie houses, even governments were vying for contracts to supply “warm snow.” New factories started pumping the gas out by the tons. We bought manufacturing plants to make the specialized snow-making equipment, and leased the rights to new start-up companies. Even the money rolled over us like an avalanche.” He glanced for a moment at the numerous glittering jewels adorning Tina’s hands and neck.

“Three years after we started, the reports began to come in. At first we discounted them. No one could envision a way that the process could get away from us like that. We were the only source of the gas. How could it happen without it?”

He swirled the contents of his glass and looked into it. “We didn’t realize that with every use, some of the gas was escaping from us, and was beginning to collect in the upper atmosphere. It shouldn’t have been a problem, because we knew it was unstable when exposed to ultraviolet light. But we had made so much of it!”

“It persisted, and it became a feature of weather all over the globe. Within two more years, the snow coverage was year-round in the most Northerly climates, and two years after that, every land mass beyond the fortieth parallel was covered in snow all year.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself, Rodney. Three fourths of all that gas was made by bootleggers, and most of that occurred after you had suspended operations!”

He gave her a wan smile. “Yes, they started cutting into our profits in a major way. But by then we had made our fortune. And by then the damage had been done.”

“Oh, come on Rod! The scientific community has agreed that this is only a temporary phenomenon. Within another decade, all of the gas will have dissipated, and things will start getting back to normal. The ice-roads carry the food grown in the tropical areas up to the people who have been resettled in the snow villages. It’s as if the whole world went on Winter Holiday! With the global cooperation required, war went away, and you’ll remember that before this, we were very worried that global warming was going to destroy whole cities of people.”

“Oh, yeah! Global warming!” He laughed again. “Thanks for reminding me. I had almost forgotten about that. -- Yep Saved the world, I did.” He drained the rest of his sherry and stared silently out at the vast and empty whiteness.

NicknamedBob . . . . . 08/17/2005