Fuel-7 -- "Who is Who and What is What ?"

Fuel-7

Chapter 1: "Who is Who and What is What ?"

Two years back TDP led coalition Indian Government setup small independent research groups that work 'under cover' to research on technologies that would power the future of the nation. Media has had little or no access to these institutions ever since they have been hinted to be established. Certain pieces of information came to light last year, about innovations in paper technology, but nothing could be confirmed as there was no evidence and the very existence of these institutions is being denied by the government. These low-profile groups are believed to be "the current necessities that would fuel the future of the nation" by some elite segments of the society that believes in the existence or the necessity of such groups.


A 7 member research group of similar kind was working on developing a Fuel for future generations. Currently they were working on the design of a synthetic polymer that mimics Tandra. Tandra itself had appeared in early 2030s when it threatened to replace petrol. Tandra had enormous potential if it had been inexpensive. However, it couldn't replace petrol till date due to its cost of production which is still 10 times higher than petrol.

The current research in this group was to mimic Tandra by creating a synthetic polymer that would be very cheap. The synthetic polymer, currently named 3Biogen-Alpha within this closed group, would then have to undergo a variant of the process of Catagenesis which is a fundamental process in the conversion of Kerogens to Hydrocarbons. A major roadblock in the process was that the Hydrocarbons generated in this process were very unstable and cannot be contained for longer periods of time.


2076, 12-Feb. 9.27 AM
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Dr Bramhi Acharya, a young PhD from University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) who worked with the legendary Prof James Ervin had created a stir with his variant to the process of Categenesis earlier in 2073. Dr Acharya now envisioned that the instability of these very high order Hydrocarbons could be avoided by creating them on the fly which would avoid all the problems associated with storing them. Last week Dr Acharya gave a presentation where he theoretically proved that Online-Categenesis in small scale was possible and isn't risky. Today he is going to prove it in practice at 10 AM in the seminar hall of the lavish Research facility that this group was granted. Sailesh and Madhu were excited at the expected grand meeting where history would be created. The other senior members of the group were wary of the consequences of the failure of the experiment.

Sailesh and Madhu were the youngest members of the 7-member team, who were still relatively new recruits to this team. Sailesh is a post-doc researcher at the IIT Hyderabad who has been contracted by Dr Acharya at this institute. Madhu meanwhile is a promising PhD participant at IIT Hyderabad who is being co-advised by Dr Acharya at this institute. She had won several young scientist awards from various organizations for her little contributions that she already made during her MSc and 1st year PhD. Both Sailesh and Madhu were hand-picked by Dr Acharya himself. Acharya believed more in childlike enthusiasm than decades of experience, that comes bundled with lack of adaptability and indispensable ego.

Dr Mini was a senior research associate professor at Columbia University, USA. She pursued her MS and PhD degrees from Columbia University under Prof emeritus Jonathan Owen at Columbia Chemistry. During her PhD she had created a synthetic resin using polymerization-polyaddition reaction that was 10,000 times as strong as cement. Soon after her PhD, she went to 'NASA Ames research center' to study as a post-doc researcher, the usage of solid-resins in creating shields for Space Shuttles that were aimed at reaching as close to Sun as possible. Her advisor Prof Owen described her as "For the extra-ordinarily confident, innocent-looking, bitchy brilliant woman that Mini is, you would definitely want to work with her. She is among the best researchers I have seen and definitely my best student. I have learnt more from her, than she had learnt from me. I wish it were the other way around, and then she wouldn't be bitchy. But if that were so, may be, I wouldn't be as respected as I am today."
Later as a researcher Dr Mini was associated with Dr Acharya during his post-doc at UDRI. Despite the sharp contrast among the two, they were very thick friends. Much of the friendship was due to their 12 year association in school as classmates, than the 2 yrs they worked together after their PhDs.

Dr Ashutosh Saha was a prominent mathematician who had little or no role in this dream project of Dr Acharya. Dr Saha is a man who was a conventional mathematician who had extensively worked on Number theory. He is most recently known for his achievements in Number theory and especially in giving the most convincing partial proofs for Reimann hypothesis, which is said to be the most difficult problem among the 23 Hilbert problems on mathematics. He is a directly nominated recruitee from the National Science Foundation into this project. In 2046, he had been nominated for the fields medal, for which he declined to be considered for saying "I haven't done anything to mankind".

Mr Kalyan Murthy was a senior researcher at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) who was a college dropout from Stanford, and came back to india to complete his M.Sc from IIT Kharagpur to later join BARC. He was the youngest member ever to reach "senior researcher" position at BARC. Kalyan was transferred to Dr Acharya's team with a special permission from the president of India.

Ms Sushma was the youngest and the most dumbest of all the other members of the team. She was 22 and had a charming image of the girl next-door. Despite her inexperience which makes her look dumb she was very good at office management and related activities for which Dr Acharya hand-picked her to this new team. She was very excited to be part of the team, but never knew what being in a top-secret research team would mean. The otherwise nonstop blabbering doll would now have to keep silent the day through, and worse, giggle at the geeky jokes that others would crack which made no sense to her.


Everybody had assembled at office for a scheduled presentation by Dr Acharya, who is yet to arrive to the venue. Time was ticking...